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THE    ARABIAN     HORSE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2009  with  funding  from 

Boston  Library  Consortium  IVIember  Libraries 


http://www.archive.org/details/arabianhorsehiscOOtwee 


THE     ARABIAN     HORSE 


HIS    COUNTRY    AND    PEOPLE 


WITH    PORTRAITS    OF    TYPICAL    OR    FAMOUS    ARABIANS 


AND    OTHER   ILLUSTRATIONS 


ALSO 

A   MAP   OF   THE   COUNTRY   OF   THE  ARABIAN    HORSE,    AND   A    DESCRIPTIVE 
GLOSSARY  OF   ARABIC   WORDS   AND    PROPER    NAMES 


BY 


MAJOR-GENERAL    W.    TWEEDIE,    C.S.I. 

FOR    MANY   YEARS   H.B.  M.'s   CONSUL-GENERAL,    BAGHDAD,    AND    POLITICAL    RESIDENT   FOR    THE 
GOVERNMENT    OF    INDIA    IN    TURKISH    ARABIA 


4>,'j-^ 


WILLIAM     BLACKWOOD    AND    SONS 

EDINBURGH     AND     LONDON 
MDCCCXCIV 


All  Rishts  reserved 


PREFACE. 


A  LOVE  of  horses,  even  when  it  does  not  help  to  originate  the  military 
bent,  seldom  fails  to  be  developed  by  active  service.  The  Author  of 
this  volume,  when  still  very  young,  found  himself  in  the  thick  of  a  campaign 
which  lasted  for  two  years.  In  the  harder  half  of  that  period,  while  the  first 
shock  of  the  Sepoy  Mutiny  and  War  was  being  confronted,  he  was  not  a  mounted 
officer,  but  an  ensign  with  a  marching  regiment.  In  India  this  makes  little 
difference,  as  there,  even  in  British  regiments,  the  infantry  subaltern,  scarcely  less 
than  the  cavalry  and  the  staff  officer,  has  his  faithful  horse  as  his  partner  in  every 
duty,  except  on  parade  and  when  the  battalion  is  formed  for  action.  During  the 
mid-day  halt  the  shadow  of  the  noble  animal  protects  him  from  the  sun's  rays  ; 
and  in  cold  wet  nights,  when  riding  round  the  pickets,  he  is  often  fain  to  thrust  his 
feet  into  his  horse's  armpits  for  warmth.  Impressions  stamped  upon  the  mind  in 
this  way  have  all  the  elements  of  permanence ;  and  the  Author,  when  the  episode 
of  the  Mutiny  was  over,  found  himself  an  Arab  as  regards  his  love  for  horses. 

Thus  it  came  to  pass,  that  when  the  changes  and  chances  of  official  life 
removed  him,  many  years  afterwards,  from  India  to  the  homes  and  haunts  of 
the  Arabs,  one  of  his  first  thoughts  was,  that  he  would  enjoy  an  opportunity  of 
observing  whether  the  Arabian  Horse  rises  or  falls  in  estimation,  when  seen, 
so  to  speak,  through  the  eyes  of  the  country  which  yields  him. 

The  following  pages  have  grown  out  of  that  idea.  They  were  written  at 
Baghdad,  between  1885  and  1891,  in  such  intervals  of  leisure  as  consular  duties 
permitted.  It  is  with  the  greatest  diffidence  that  they  are  now  offered  to  the 
public.  This  feeling  does  not  arise  from  any  doubt  regarding  the  interest  which 
surrounds  the  central  figure.  The  Horse,  according  to  a  recent  calculation,  had, 
up    to    1887,    "at    least    3800    separate    works"    devoted    to    him    in    the    various 

b 


VI 


PREFACE. 


languages  of  the  civilised  world.^  Europe,  it  is  needless  to  notice,  vies  with  Asia 
in  appreciating  him.  If,  in  the  East,  the  "  Lion  of  the  Punjab "  despatched 
two  military  expeditions,  and  spent  about  ;^6,ooo,ooo  sterling,  to  obtain  posses- 
sion of  Laili,^  did  not  the  son  of  Darius,  in  the  West,  when  Bucephalas  ^  died 
at  the  age  of  30,  found  the  city  of  Bucephalia  in  his  honour?  In  Christendom, 
the  idea  of  chivalry  sets  out  with  that  of  horsemanship ;  the  knight's  spurs  form 
his  essential  badges ;  and  cavalry  takes  precedence  of  the  other  arms.  There 
are  towns  in  England  which  have  horses  for  their  primary,  and  human  beings 
for  their  secondary,  inhabitants. 

The  Author's  misgivings  in  bringing  out  his  volume  relate  to  what  may 
be  called  its  historical  parts.  It  is  not  a  book  of  the  Arabian  Horse  only ;  but, 
as  the  title-page  shows,  of  the  Arabian  Horse  and  his  environment.  The  reasons 
which  necessitate  this  panoramic  treatment  are  stated  in  the  opening  chapters. 
The  horse  of  the  Bedouin  Arabs  holds  so  unique  a  place  in  natural  history,  and 
enters  so  completely  into  the  lives  of  those  who  breed  him,  that  it  is  impossible 
to  describe  him  while  adhering  to  the  beaten  track  of  works  on  horses.  But  one 
who  is  writing  on  the  classic  ground  of  ancient  Babylonia  labours  under  at  least 
two  disadvantages.  In  searching  for  historical  standing -ground,  he  encounters 
questions  which  have  already  been  considered  in  Europe  by  trained  investigators, 
who  live  beside  great  libraries,  and  have  made  good  use  of  them.  And  in 
choosing  and  shaping  the  materials  which  lie  more  or  less  before  him,  he  finds 
it  difficult  to  observe  true  proportions.  In  plainer  language,  there  is  a  constant 
temptation  to  make  the  most  of  the  opportunity,  and  to  introduce  details  and  ac- 
cessories which  may  be  regarded  by  many  in  the  light  of  encumbrances. 

Even  in  Baghdad,  the  feeling  was  always  present  that  European  readers  might 
not  relish  too  full  accounts  of  Arabia  and  the  Arabs.  In  busy  Edinburgh,  where 
this  Preface  is  written,  it  may  be  imagined  how  much  more  forcibly  the  same 
apprehension  presents  itself. 

But  it  is  too  late  now  for  such  reflections.  Her  Majesty  the  Queen-Empress 
rules  over  about  as  many  Muslim  subjects  as  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  and  the  Shah  of 
Persia  put  together.  Arabia  is  the  "  holy  land,"  and  Arabic  the  sacred  language,  of 
all  those  masses.  If  our  countrymen  have  not  so  far  formed  any  very  strong 
desire  to   enlarge  the  area  of  their  knowledge  on  Arabian  topics,  this  book   may 


1  The  Horse  (in  "Modern  Science"  series),  by 
W.  H.  Flower,  C.B.,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.,  London,  1891  ; 
in  preface.  At  least  eighty-six  of  the  3800  works 
referred  to  are  written  in  Arabic  or  Persian,  and  are 
specially  devoted  to  the  Arabian  variety. 

^  The  sex  of  Laili  varies  in  different  accounts  ;  but 


see  the  story  of  this  animal's  acquisition  in  Sir  L. 
Griffin's  sketch  of  Ranjit  Singh,  in  "  Rulers  of  India  " 
series. 

3  The  name  of  Alexander's  horse,  we  now  know, 
was  Bucephalas,  not  Bucephalus,  which  was  the  name 
of  a  famous  breed  of  Thessaly. 


PREFACE.  vii 

stimulate  the  reader  to  take  an  interest  in  a  nation  which  has  made  or  moulded  at 
least  1300  years  of  Eastern  history. 

It  may  be  well  here  to  explain  that  the  religion  which  is  called  in  Arabia  the 
DInu  'l  IslAm,  and  in  Europe,  not  too  correctly,  Mohammedanism,  is  looked  at  in 
the  following  pages,  as  far  as  possible,  from  the  Arabian  standpoint.  Undoubtedly 
the  Arab  Prophet,  as  his  system  grew,  sought  to  make  it  universal.^  Under  no 
other  view  of  his  mission  could  he  have  claimed  to  be  the  Messenger  of  God,  not 
only  to  the  Arabian  tribes,  but  to  the  whole  human  family.  Astounding  progress, 
we  know,  has  been  made  towards  the  realisation  of  this  conception.  An  eighth  or 
so  of  mankind  now  pray  with  the  face  turned  towards  Mecca.  But  this  fact,  how- 
ever impressive,  does  not  affect  the  essential  truth  that  Muhammad  was  an  Arab 
speaking  to  Arabs. 

Copious  sources  of  information  about  the  Dinu  '1  Islam  are  open  to  English 
readers.  When  learning  revived  in  the  sixteenth  century,  the  great  leaders  of  the 
Reformation  thought  and  wrote  much  on  the  subject  of  El  Islam  ;  and  the  theories 
which  they  propounded  regarding  it  are  not  unrepresented  in  modern  literature. 
Goethe  and  Sprenger,  and,  later,  Noldeke,  Carlyle,  and  others,  have  severally  ap- 
plied newer  methods  to  the  study  both  of  the  faith  and  the  man.  Lastly,  philosophic 
Indians  have  written  books  on  Islamism  which  are  to  the  Arab  religion  \Nh3.t  Roberi 
Elsmere  is  to  Christianity.  The  Arabs  themselves  have  not  as  yet  conceived  the 
idea  of  explaining  away  their  ancient  Semitic  creed,  so  that  it  shall  equally  suit  the 
believer  and  the  unbeliever ;  and  in  the  frequent  references  to  their  Faith  which  the 
general  subject  of  this  volume  necessitates,  the  statement  of  outstanding  facts 
forms  the  principal  object.  On  the  point  of  what  Islamism  is,  and  what  it  is  not, 
Al  Kur-an,  and  the  Prophet's  authentic  "  Sayings,"  are  the  only  witnesses  which  will 
be  cited.  It  is  said  that  there  are  people  who  condemn  all  books  in  which  they 
find  something  different  from  that  which  they  expect  to  find.  But  a  very  ordinary 
amount  of  reflection  will  be  sufficient  to  show,  that  he  who  approaches  Arabian 
subjects,  on  Arab  soil,  with  an  adequate  command  of  Arabic,  and  in  sympathy  with 
the  Arabs,  is  likely,  even  though  a  European,  to  gather  fresh  materials. 

If  all  who  have  aided  the  Author  were  here  enumerated,  the  list  would  be 
chiefly  composed  of  persons  who  do  not  see  European  books,  and  do  not  know  the 
English  language.  But  it  is  impossible  to  refrain  from  mentioning  that,  but  for  the 
encouragement  which  has  been  given  to  this  work,  from  its  earliest  stage  onward, 
by  Mr  William  Blackwood,  himself  a  genuine  lover  of  horses,  it  would  never  have 
been  completed. 

The  most  grateful  acknowledgments  are  also  due  to  Professor  W.  Robertson 

'  Al  Kur-an,  Su-ra  xxxviii.  87. 


viii  PREFA  CE. 

Smith  of  Cambridge.  One  of  the  Author's  first  proceedings,  after  his  return  from 
Baghdad,  was  to  submit  the  completed  manuscript  to  this  most  eminent  scholar,  and 
solicit  the  favour  of  his  reading  it  in  proof.  This  request  was  willingly  granted  ; 
and  the  result  has  been  a  great  many  valuable  corrections  and  suggestions,  not,  of 
course,  on  matters  of  opinion,  but  on  points  of  Semite  lore  and  scholarship.  Doubt- 
less, in  spite  of  all  help,  and  in  spite  of  many  years  of  honest  labour,  deficiencies 
have  to  be  admitted.  How  far  these  are  to  be  held  compensated  for  by  the  novel 
circumstance  that  this  book,  like  the  subject  of  which  it  treats,  is  a  product  of 
Arabia,  others  must  be  left  to  determine. 

Edinburgh,  ig^A  yl/rtrc/i  1894. 


IX 


METHOD    OF 
TRANSCRIPTION     FROM    ARABIC    TO    ROMAN    LETTERS. 


I.  It  is  impossible  to  convey  to  those  who  have  no  ear-knowledge  of  a  language  a 
correct  idea  of  its  pronunciation  through  the  letters  of  another  language ;  therefore  we 
do  not  attempt  too  much  in  this  direction.  On  the  other  hand,  Arabic  words  will  not  be 
written  without  reference  to  their  Semitic  forms.  A  middle  course  is  aimed  at ;  and  the 
reader  whose  patience  serves  to  carry  him  through  the  following  explanations  may,  in  the 
case  of  most  words,  come  near  enough  the  right  pronunciation. 

II.  In  the  28  letters  (all  consonants)  of  the  Arabic  alphabet,  there  occur  2  forms  of  .S ;  2 
of  T,  K,  and  H  respectively ;  and  4  of  D,  only  one  of  which  is  our  D,  while  the  other  3 
forms  are  variants  ol  D}  All  these  several  symbols,  each  of  which  bears  for  the  Arabs  its  own 
proper  sound,  are  distinguished  in  European  grammars  by  differently  marked  letters  ;  but  we 
stop  short  of  this. 

III.  Next  for  notice  are  the  2  essentially  Semitic  letters  £  («'/«)  and  ^  {ghain).  The 
former  is  a  strengthened  a,  i,  or  u,  according  to  the  vowel-marks  borne  by  it :  shoi^t,  when  07ily 
the  vowel-mark  acts  on  it ;  elongated,  when  preceded  or  followed  by  one  of  the  three  con- 
sonants used  by  the  Arabs  to  form  their  long  vowels  and  diphthongs.  This  letter  will  be 
written,  when  sJwrt,  a',  i',  u\  as  the  case  may  be  ;  when  elongated,  a,  i,  A'?  The  other  is 
that  father  of  gutturals  which  has  been  described  as  a  grinding  together  in  the  throat  of 
Arabs  of  the  Greek  7,  the  Northumbrian  r,  and  the  French  r  grasscye.  A  recent  traveller 
represents  ^  by  gli-r ;  but  gh  contents  us.  As  only  the  born  Arab  (and  his  camel)  can  utter 
it,  the  equivalent  used  is  immaterial. 


'  Our  C,  G,  P,  Q,  V,  and  X  have  no  exactly  corre- 
spondent signs  in  Arabic.  For  C  soft,  S  answers  ;  and 
for  C hard,  K.  Our  G  liard chiefly  appears  in  the  sound 
given  to  J  hy  par  exemple  the  Egyptians,  who  say  ^a- 
inal  {Camelliis),  not  ja-tnat.  The  question  of  whether 
the  hard  or  the  soft  sound  of  y  be  the  more  primitive 
is  perhaps  an  open  one.  [In  this  book  C  and  G  are 
but  httle  used  in  transcription,  because  of  the  double 
sounds  which  belong  to  them  :  when,  e.g.,  na-kib  is 
written  na-cib,  or  Nejd,  Negd,  one  reader  will  sound 


the  c  as  in  cat,  and  another  as  in  cityj  one,  the  g  as 
in  game,  and  another,  as  in  gem^  X  with  Arabs  is 
/?■  followed  by  s,  e.g.  it:-sir — with  the  def.  art.  our 
el-ixir  (Gr.  ^vptoy).  The  soft  c/i  (as  in  c/iop)  of 
Tui-kish  and  Persian  is  not  Arabic  ;  but  multitudes 
of  Arabs  thus  sound  the  weaker  A",  as  chard  for  kaj-d. 
'  These  apostrophes  are  to  be  distinguished  from 
the  similar  marks  which  are  used  with  words  in 
construction,  and  which  indicate  elisionj  as  baitu  V 
Amir=Jwiise  oftJie  Amir. 


TRANSCRIPTION  FROM  ARABIC   TO  ROMAN  LETTERS. 


IV.  The  foregoing  remarks  may  be  thus  tabulated  and  supplemented  : — 

a}  i,  u,  represent — (i)    ivhen   Jinmarkcd,  merely  the  (short)  vowel-signs  (in  Arabic  not 

letters  at  all),  as  in  moral,  pin,  and  pull. 

(2)  When  capped  thus  '^,  the  elongated  a,  i,  and  00  of  father,  intrigue, 
and  good  respectively. 

(3)  When  ticked  off  with  an  apostrophe  {e.g.,  A'rab,  I'rak,  U'th-man), 
the  first  of  the  two  guttural  letters  (iinelongated')  alluded  to  in  par.  III.  supra. 

(4)  When  thus  distinguished  by  an  apostrophe  and  also  capped  (e.g., 
Fid-a'n,  sha-i'r,  Su-u'd),  the  same  guttural  lengthened  ox  made  into  a  diphthong 
through  the  action  on  it  of  a  consonant.  \_N.B. — With  gutturals,  i  approxi- 
mates to  e,  and  u  to  0 ;  e.g.,  I'rak  may  be  written  E'rak,  and  U'th-man, 
O'th-man.] 

as  in  aisle. 

like  0  in  hozv. 

as  in  English  (or  rather  Italian). 

is   used   in   these  pages  indifferently  for   the    3    letters  bracketed   together  in 

par.  II.  snpra  as  lisping  or  aspirated  variants  of  D.     [The  Turks,  Persians, 

and  Indians  pronounce  all  3  as  3?[ 
as  in  grey. 

[Merely  a  speech-variant  of  the  deep  k\  as  in  gang. 
As  xxijonrney. 
as  in  bone, 
th,  kh,  sh,  gJi,  unseparated  by  a  hyphen,  represent  in  these  pages — th,  the  Greek  6 ;  kh,  the 

Scottish  ch  of  loch;  sh,  the  terminal  sound  \i\fish;  gh  [the  guttural  above 

referred  to  as  written  by  some  gh-r'\  as  in  interjection  vgli. 


at, 
an, 
d, 
dh. 


e. 


0, 


After  all,  we  shall  leave  on  one  side  the  above  transliteration  when  pronunciation  may 
seem  to  be  thereby  aided — as  by  writing  Ae-ni-sa  for  Fnaza  ;  and  further,  retain  such  familiar 
forms  as  Yemen,  Medina,  Bedouin,  Bussorah,  Oman.  The  sole  breach  of  the  last  -  named 
principle  is  Mu-ham-mad.^  Not  even  the  classic  authority  of  Washington  Irving's  Life  of 
Mahomet  can  reconcile  us  to  a  form  which  is  but  little  in  advance  of  Mawniet?  "  Muham- 
mad "  exactly  reproduces  the  Arabic  letters  and  vowel-marks. 


1  Grammarians  recognise  the  tendency  equally  of 
a  the  vowel-mark  {e.g.,  Najd)  and  a  in  words  like  at 
the  def.  art.  to  iiidine  to  ej  so  that  Najd  may  be 
written  Nejd,  and  al,  &c.,  el.  Indeed  one  oftener 
sees  El  Emir  than  Al  A-inir. 

^  This  mode  of  separating  foreign  names  into 
syllables   is    intended   as   an    aid   to  pronunciation ; 


but  it  also  follows  the  "  shuttings-off,"  or  truncations, 
in  the  Arabic  block  of  letters.  The  Arabs  attach 
much  importance  to  the  proper  bringing  out  of  syl- 
lables :  e.g.,  Kii-ran,  for  Kiir-An,  is  as  unclerkly  as 
disease,  for  dis-ease,  in  English. 

2  "A  whining  mammet." 

— Romeo  and  Juliet. 


XI 


LIST    OF    THE    PRINCIPAL    WORKS    CONSULTED. 


N.B. — hi  footnote  references,  the  titles  of  tJie  folloiving  zuorks  xvill  seldom  be  given,  but  merely 
their  numbers  in  this  catalogue. 

Works  marked  with  an  asterisk  are  those  to  ivliich  the  author  Jiereby  acknozvledges  his 
obligations. 


1.  Aide-de-Camp,   The   Griffin's.      By   Blunt 

Spurs.     3d  edit.     Madras,  i860. 

2.  *Arabia  Deserta,  Tr.wels  in.     By  Charles 

M.  Doughty.  2  vols.  Cambridge  Univer- 
sity Press,  1888. 

3.  Arabia,  Diary  of  a  Journey  across,  during 

THE  year  1 81 9.  By  Captain  G.  F.  Sadlier, 
H.M.'s  47th  Regiment.  (Compiled  from 
Records  Bombay  Govt.  :   1866.) 

4.  Arabia,   Gleanings   from   the  Desert  of. 

By  the  late  Major  R.  D.  Upton,  9th  Royal 
Lancers.     London,  1881. 

5.  Arabian  Horses  studied  in  their  Native 

Country  in  1874  -  75.  By  the  Same. 
Fraser's  Magazine,  Sept.  1876. 

6.  Arabia,    Newmarket    and  :    An    Examina- 

tion of  the  Descent  of  Racers  and 
Coursers.      By  the  Same.     1873. 

7.  Arabia,   Narrative  of  a  Year's  Journey 

through  Central  and  Eastern  (1862. 
63).  By  William  Giftord  Palgrave,  late  of 
the  8th  Regt.  Bombay  N.I.  Original 
edit.,   2  vols.     1865. 

8.  Arabum,  Specimen  Histori^e.     Auctore  Ed- 

vardo  Pocockio  :  accessit  Historia  Veterum 
Arabum,  ex  Aboo'l  Fe'da.  Cura  Antonii 
Sylvestre  de  Sacy;  edidit  Josephus  White. 
Oxonii,  mdcccvi. 


9.  Arabia,  Travels  through,  and  other 
Countries  in  the  East,  performed  by 
M.  Niebuhr.  (Condensed  English  trans- 
lation in  2  vols.,  by  R.  Heron — Edinburgh, 
1792  —  of  the  first  3  vols,  of  Niebuhr's 
Narratives.) 

ID.  Bengal    Sporting    Magazine   (J.    H.    Stoc- 
queler).     Calcutta,   1833  to   1846. 

11.  Blunt,   Lady  Anne:    *Bedouin  Tribes  of 

the  Euphrates.  Edited,  with  a  Pre- 
face, and  some  Account  of  the  Arabs  and 
their  Horses,  by  W.  S.  Blunt.  2  vols. 
London  :  John  Murray,    1S79. 

12.  Blunt,    Lady    Anne.      *A    Pilgrimage   to 

Nejd,  the  Cradle  of  the  Arab  Race. 
2  vols.     London  :  John  Murray,  1881. 

13.  Blunt,    Mr   W.    S.  :    The    Thoroughbred 

Horse — English  and  Arabian.  Nitie- 
teenth   Century,  Sept.   1880. 

14.  Blunt,  Mr  AV.  S.  :  The  Forthcoming  Arab 

Race  at  Newmarket.  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, May  1884. 

15.  BURCKHARDT,    J.    L.  :     *NOTES    ON    THE    BED- 

OUINS AND  Wahabys,  collected  during  his 
Travels  in  the  East.  2  vols.  London^ 
1831. 

16.  Burckhardt,  J.  L. :    *Travels  in  Arabia. 

2  vols.     London:  H.  Colburn,  1829. 


Xll 


LIST  OF   THE  PRINCIPAL    WORKS    CONSULTED. 


17.  Cavalry:    Its  History  and  Tactics.      By 

Capt.  L.  E.  Nolan,  15th  Hussars.  3d  edit. 
1S60. 

18.  El  Kamsa  (Al  Kham-sa)  :    II  cavallo  Arabo 

Puro  Sangue :  studio  di  sedici  anni,  in 
Siria,  Palestina,  Egitto  e  nei  Deserti  dell' 
Arabia ;  di  Carlo  Guarmani  di  Livorno. 
Traduzione  dal  manoscritto  originale  Fran- 
cese  del  dottor  Ansaldo  Felleti  di  Bologna. 
Bologna,  1864. 

19.  ^Encyclopaedia     Britannica.        9th     edit. 

1875-1888. 

20.  Horse -Dealing    in     Syria,     1854.       Two 

Articles  in  Blackwood's  Edhiburgh  Maga- 
zine, vol.  Ixxxvi. 

21.  Horses,  English  and  Eastern.     By  Sir  F. 

H.  Doyle.     Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  xxix., 

N.S. 

22.  Horse,    Natural    History    of    the.      By 

Lieut.-Col.  C.  Ham.  Smith,  forming  vol. 
xii.  of  the  Naturalists'  Library,  edited  by 
Sir  W.  Jardine,  Bart.     Edinburgh,   1843. 

23.  Horses  of  the  Sahara,  and  the  Manners 

OF  the  Desert,  The.  By  E.  Daumas. 
With  Commentaries  by  the  Emir  Abdel 
Kader.  Translated  from  the  French  by 
James  Hutton.  London  :  W.  H.  Allen, 
1863. 

24.  Horse,  The  History  of  the.     By  W.  C.  L. 

Martin.     London,  1845. 

25.  Horse,  The  Book  of  the.      By  S.  Sidney. 

London  and  New  York :  Cassell,  Fetter, 
&  Galpin. 

26.  India  Sporting  Review,   edited   by   "Abel 

East."     N.S.     Calcutta,   1856  to  1857. 

27.  Itineraire  de   Jerusalem  au  Neged  Sep- 

tentrional. Par  M.  Guarmani.  Extrait 
du  bulletin  de  la  Socie'te'  de  Geographie. 
(Nov.  1865.) 


28.  Journey    to    the    Wahabee    Capital    of 

Riyadh  in  Central  Arabia,  Report  on 
A.  By  Lieut-Col.  L.  Pelly,  Political  Resi- 
dent Persian  Gulf.  Bombay  (printed  for 
Govt),   1866. 

29.  *KuR-AN,  Al.     Medina,  c.  a.d.  635  et  650. 
[Every  Kur-an  extant,  no  matter  when  copied 

or  printed,  might  properly  bear  the  later 
of  the  above  two  dates.  There  is  nothing 
to  show  that  the  Prophet  made  any  pro- 
vision for  the  handing  down  of  his  "  revela- 
tions "  in  a  firm  and  solid  form.  He  caused, 
indeed,  to  be  recorded,  in  Sfi-ras^  the 
heart-moving  words  which  came  to  him ; 
but  the  freed  slave  Zaid  who  performed 
this  service  observed  no  method.  The 
tablets  which  received  the  writings  con- 
sisted of  flat  stones,  skins,  the  woody  parts 
of  palm-branches,  and  the  like.^  After  the 
Prophet's  death,  Zaid  collected  these  liter- 
ally "  fugitive  pieces,"  and  made  a  fair  copy. 
This  first  transcript,  traditionally  known  as 
As  Suhf,  or  The  Leaves,  was  afterwards 
destroyed,  so  as  to  give  finality  to  a  later 
edition  which  was  made,  in  U'th-man's 
Caliphate,  by  Zaid  and  three  associates. 
It  is  known  from  a  sure  tradition  that  the 
four  men  wrote  exactly  four  copies ;  and 
all  later  manuscripts  are  reproductions  of 
this  second  redaction.  The  text  thus 
formed  by  the  care  of  the  Caliph  U'th- 
man  was  accepted  at  the  time  with  won- 
derful unanimity  by  those  who  had  heard 
the  Kur-an  from  the  mouth  of  the  Prophet. 
In  our  day,  an  eminent  European  critic 
pronounces  the  opinion  that  it  "  contains 
none  but  genuine  elements — though  some- 
times in  very  strange  order."] 

30.  Layard,    Sir    Henry  :   *Nineveh   and    its 

Remains,  by.     3d  edit.     2  vols.     1849. 

31.  Layard,  Sir  Henry:  *Discoveries  in  the 

Ruins  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  with 
Travels  in  Armenia,  Kurd-istan,  and 
THE  Desert.     1853. 


^  In  late  Hebrew,  shil-rah  means  a  series:  or,  a  rozu 
of  stones  in  a  building,  whence  a  line  of  writing.  Accord- 
ingly, it  is  supposed  by  European  investigators  that  Muham- 
mad borrowed  the  term  "  Su-ra  "  from  the  Jewish  parlance 
of  the  period.  If  this  be  so,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  word 
puzzled  the  old  Muslim  scholars.  Even  now  many  of  their 
successors  exercise  their  ingenuity  in  finding  Arabic  roots 
for  it.  But  if  the  Arabs  have  the  orthodoxy,  the  Germans 
have  the  etymology. 

The   constituents  of  the  written   Kur-an  appear  in    114 


Sii-ras,  each  of  which  bears  its  own  title,  generally  one  of 
the  leading  words  which  occur  in  it.  In  translations,  Sti-ra 
is  commonly  rendered  by  "chapter."  But  it  is  only  in  part 
that  the  division  into  SA-ras  corresponds  with  the  separate 
"revelations"';  and  in  these  pages  we  write,  not  Ch.,  but 
S.,  for  Su-ra. 

^  Many  add  the  shoulder-blades  {ak-tdf)  of  sheep  to  tliis 
narration  :  and  such  have  the  support  of  the  commenta- 
tor Bu-kha-rJ  (v.  Ki-tdbu  V  tafstr,  vol.  v.  p.  196,  Egypt, 
edit.) 


LIST  OF   THE  PRINCIPAL    WORKS    CONSULTED. 


Xlll 


Layard,  Sir  Henry:  Early  Adventures 
OF,  IN  Persia,  Su-si-a-na,  and  Babylonia. 
2  vols.     1887. 


33.  *Mad-du  'l  Ka-iius  (lit.  Tide  of  the  Ocean). 

An  English  -  Arabic  Lexicon.  By  E.  W. 
Lane.  London  :  Williams  &  Norgate, 
1863-93. 

34.  Mesopotamia,  Travels  in.     By  J.  S.  Buck- 

ingham. 2  vols.  London  :  H.  Colbmn, 
1827. 

35.  *Mu-a'l-la-kat    septem  :    Carmina   antiquis- 

sima  Arabum.  D.  F.  Aug.  Arnold.  Lip- 
sise,   1850.      {V.  Index  L,  art.  Mu-a'l-la- 

KAT.) 

2,6.  Oriental  Sporting  Magazine  (Bombay  Pre- 


37- 


sidency).  June  1828  to  June  1833.  Re- 
print of  1S73.  2  vols.  London:  Henry 
S.   King. 

Oriental  Sporting  Magazine  (Calcutta). 
Edited  by  "Raymond."  December  1865 
to  December  1866. 


38.  Oriental  Sporting  Magazine  (N.S.)     Cal- 

cutta. From  Jan.  1868  to  Dec.  1878  (soon 
after  which  it  ceased  to  exist). 

39.  Pure  Saddle-Horses  and    how  to  Breed 

them  in  Australia  ;  together  with  a 
consideration  of  the  History  and 
Merits  of  the  English,  Arab,  Andalu- 
siAN,  and  Australian  Breeds  of  Horses. 
By  Edward  M.  Curr.     Melbourne,  1863. 


CONTENTS. 


BOOK     FIRST. 


COUNTRY    OF   THE   ARABIAN. 


CHAP. 

I.    PRELIMINARY, 


II.  DEFINITIONS,        ..... 

III.  PENINSULAR  ARABIA,      .... 

IV.  EXODUSES   OF   BEDOUIN    OUT   OF   NAJD, 

V.  ShA-MI'YA  :    OR   DESERTS   WEST   THE   EUPHRATES, 

VI.  AL  JA-ZI-RA  :     OR   DESERTS    EAST   THE   EUPHRATES, 

VII.  EL   I'RAK:    or   TIGRIS-LAND,      . 


PAGE 

3 

15 

25 

62 

65 
70 

78 


BOOK     SECOND. 


THE    BREEDERS    OF   THE   ARABIAN. 


I.    THE   HORSEMAN   MAKES   THE   HORSE,   . 
II.   WHERE   DID   THE  ARABS   COME   FROM  ? 

III.  OF   THE   BEDOUIN   AS   HORSE-BREEDERS, 

IV.  HORSE-BREEDING   AMONG   THE   SETTLED   ARABS, 


89 

92 

121 

146 


BOOK     THIRD. 


A   GENERAL   VIEW   OF   THE   ARABIAN. 


I.   THE   ARABS   LOVE   OF   HIS   HORSE, 
IL    FOREIGN   ESTIMATES   OF   THE   ARABIAN, 


157 
167 


XVI 


CONTENTS. 


III.  THE    ARABIAN    COMPARED   WITH    OTHER   VARIETIES,   IN    RESPECT    OF    CONSTITU- 

TION  AND   CHARACTER,       ........ 

IV.  DEFECTS   OF   THE   ARABIAN,        .  .  .  . 

V.   A   SUMMARY,         .......... 


197 
205 


BOOK     FOURTH. 


THE     ARABIAN     AT     HOME. 


I.   ON    THE   ORIGIN   OF   THE  ARABIAN   BREED,     . 
II.   THE   TYPICAL  ARABIAN,  .  .  .  . 

III.  THE  ARABIAN   IN   ShA-MI-YA  AND   AL  JA-Zl-RA, 

IV.  THE   ARABIAN   IN   EL   i'RAK  AND   EAST   THE   TIGRIS, 


225 
24s 
269 

277 


CONCLUSION. 


L  OF    BUYING   STRAIGHT   FROM   THE   BEDOUIN, 

II.  OF   BUYING   IN   ARABIAN   AND   I'RAKI   TOWNS, 

III.  OF   PROCURING   THROUGH   CONSULATES   OR   CONSULS, 

IV.  OF   BUYING  ARABIANS  WHICH   HAVE   BEEN   EXPORTED, 

V.  ON   THE   PROPER   TREATMENT   OF   THE   EXPORTED  ARABIAN, 


290 
296 
297 
299 
314 


INDEXES. 


INDEX 

I.    BEING  A  GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT  TO   ALL  REFERENCES  TO  ARABIC 
AND   OTHER   FOREIGN   WORDS,        ....... 

II.   INDEX   OF    SUBJECTS,       ......... 


325 
401 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS. 


HEAD   OF  THE  AUTHOR'S   G.A.H.  "  RA-SH1d,"  .  .  .  .  .On  the  Cover 

From  a  sketch  made  from  life  by  Mr  R.  Alexander,  R.S.A.,  Edinburgh. 


FULL-PAGE    PICTURES. 

H.H.  AGHA  khan's  C.A.H.   "  SHAH-RUKH,"  ......  Frontispiece 

From  a  portrait  in  oil  presented  to  the  author  by  H.H.  Agha  Sultan  Muhammad  Shah  of  Bombay, 
the  present  head  of  the  Agha  Khan  family. 

PAGE 

GROUP    OF   FOUR   HORSEMEN,  ........  QI 

To  illustrate  the  connection  between  different  forms  of  horsemanship  and  different  types  of  horses. 
Nos.  I  and  4  are  taken,  by  Messrs  Longmans,  Green,  &  Co.'s  kind  permission,  from  Richardson's  Art 
of  Horsemanship ;  and  No.  2  from  an  old  work,  by  Peters,  on  Equitation. 

FACSIMILE   OF   A   PEDIGREE   RECEIVED   WITH    AN    ARABIAN   COLT,  .  .  .         136 

BAY   ARABIAN    HORSE,   "  CLAVERHOUSE,"       .  .  .  .  .  •  .         182 

From  a  portrait  in  oil  by  the  late  Mr  Roods. 

GROUP,   CONTAINING   SEVEN   STUDIES   OF   SELECTED   ARABIANS,  .  .  .        252 

No.  2  is  reproduced,  by  the  obliging  permission  of  Mr  John  Murray,  from  Bedouin  Ti-ibes  of  the 
Eziplirates,  by  Lady  Anne  Blunt;  No.  3,  by  arrangement  with  Messrs  Cassell  &  Co.,  Limited,  from 
Sidney's  Boolt  of  the  Horse;  No.  6,  by  the  obliging  permission  of  Messrs  Longmans,  Green,  &  Co., 
from  Youatt  on  The  Horse ;  and  No.  7,  by  arrangement  with  Messrs  Routledge  &  Sons,  Limited,  from 
Tlie  Horse  in  ttie  Stable  and  the  Field,  by  Stonehenge. 

DR   JOHN    COLIN   CAMPBELL'S   G.A.H.   "  GREYLEG,"  ......        254 

From  a  portrait  in  water-colour  made  at  Bangalore. 

GENERAL   M.  J.   TURNBULL'S   G.A.H.   "HERMIT,"        ......         256 

From  a  portrait  in  oil  painted  for  this  work  by  Mrs  TURNBULL,  The  Hermitage,  Southwick,  Sussex. 

H.H.   THE   MAHARAJAH   OF  JODHPORE'S   B.A.H.   "REX,"         .....         258 
From  a  portrait   in  oil  presented  to  the  author  by   H.H.   Jeswunt  Singh,   G.C.S.I.,   Maharajah  of 
Jodhpore. 

AN   ARAB   HORSE-MART,   BYCULLA,   BOMBAY,  ......         3OO 

From  a  photograph  taken  for  this  work. 


xviii  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

THE   BAY  ARABIAN   HORSE  "EUCLID,"  .......         309 

From  a  portiait  in  oil  by  Mr  James  Clark,  animal  painter,  London. 

THE  BAY  ARABIAN   HORSE  "  LANERCOST,"  .  .  .  .  .  .         3IO 

From  a  portrait  in  oil  by  tlie  .same  artist. 


ILLUSTRATIONS    IN   THE   TEXT. 

SPECIMENS   OF   THE   IMARKS   WITH   WHICH   THE    DESERT  ARABS   BRAND   THEIR   CAMELS,       67 

THE  author's   FLYING  CAMP  BETWEEN    SIN-JAr   AND   THE   EUPHRATES,  .  .  "JJ 

From  a  sketch  made  locally. 

IN   THE  author's   GARDEN,   BAGHDAD,        .  ...  .  .  .  .86 

From  a  water-colour  sketch  by  Mrs  R.  Bowman. 

WILLIAM   I.  AND   TONSTAIN,  ........  90 

From  an  old  book. 

PORTRAIT    OF    A    HACKNEY,  ........  90 

From  The  Horse  and  the  Hound,  by  Nimrod.     (By  the  kind  permission  of  Messrs  A.  &  C.  Black. ) 

THE   "NA'L,"   OR   SHOE,   OF   THE   SEMITES,  .  .  .  .  .  .  -97 

From  a  sl^etch  made  locally. 

A    LA   BEDOUIN,  ..........         I39 

From  a  sketch  made  locally. 

THE   BEDOUIN   RIDING-HALTER,         .  .  .  .  .  ...  .         I40 

From  a  sketch  made  locally. 

THE   BEDOUIN   SADDLE,  ........  I4I 

From  a  drawing  made  for  this  work  by  Captain  F.  G.  Maunsell,  R.  A. 

THE  BEDOUIN    SPUR,  .........         I42 

From  sketches  made  locally. 

SADDLE   OF   THE   TOWN    ARABS   AND   THE   KURDS,  .  .  .  •  -147 

From  a  drawing  by  Captain  Maunsell. 

STIRRUP   OF   THE   TOWN   ARABS,   THE   PERSIANS,  AND   THE    KURDS,  .  .  .         148 

From  a  slvctch  made  locally. 

ARAB   horseman's   BIT   AND   BRIDLE,  .  .  .  .  .  .151 

From  sketclies  made  locally. 

A   MOSQUE   NEAR  BAGHDAD,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .         154 

From  a  water-colour  sketch  by  Mrs  R.  Bowman. 

THE  ASIATIC   HORSE-SHOE,    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .         180 

From  a  sketch  made  locally. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS.  xix 

A   HORSEMAN   OF   THE  INDIAN   IRREGULAR   CAVALRY   OF   THE   OLDEN   TIME,    .  .         l88 

From  an  old  book. 

A   PAIR   OF   CROOKED   FORE-LEGS,     ........         200 

From  a  sketch  made  locally. 

HORSE-SHOE   "TURNED   UP"   AT   THE  TOE,  .  .  .  .  .  .         20I 

"central"    HORSE-SHOE,       .........         202 

A   MODIFICATION   OF   THE  "CENTRAL"   HORSE-SHOE,  .....         203 

A   BIT    ON    THE    TIGRIS,  .........         222 

From  a  water-colour  sketch  by  Mrs  Bowman. 

CENTAUR,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .         238 

From  an  old  book. 

B.A.   HORSE,   "AKBAR,"  .........        257 

AN   INTERIOR   IN   BAGHDAD,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .         285 

CAMEL   HOWDAH   USED   BY   THE   BEDOUIN    LADIES,  .  .  .  .  .         32I 

From  a  sketch  in  Sir  H.  A.  'Ls.j^txd.'^  Nineveh  and  its  Remains.     (By  the  kind  permission  of  Mr  John 
Murray.) 


MAP    AND    TABLES. 

MAP   OF   THE   COUNTRY   OF   THE  ARABIAN    HORSE,               .                .                .  In  pocket  at  end 

A   TABLE   OF   THE   MAIN   DIVISIONS   AND   SUBDIVISIONS   OF   THE  AE-NI-ZA  NATION,       .         121 

A   TABLE    OF    THE    FIVE    ["  AL    KHAM-SA "]    PRIMARY    DIVISIONS    OF    THE  PURE-BRED 

HORSE   STOCK   OF   THE   DESERT,          .                .                .                .                .  .                .235 

A   TABLE   OF   THE  COLOURS   PROPER   TO   ARABIAN    HORSES — 

A.,   COLOURS   AKIN    TO   BAY,        ........         262 

B.,  THE   WHITE,   GREY,  AND   ROAN    COLOURS,                  .                .                .  .                .         263 


CORRIGENDA. 


PAGE 

19,  line  27,  fro  "accepted  there,"  lege  here  accepted. 

32,  f.n.  I,  line  i„pro  "  Ar-Ri-adh,"  lege  Ar  Ri-adh. 

84,  f.n.  I,  heading  Du-laim, /;'o  "w.  p.  135,"  lege  v.  p.  85  ;  et,  under  heading  Mun-ta-fik, /;-(?  "7'.  p.  135," 

lege  V.  p.  85. 
148,  line  1 1,  pro  "  khur-Jcn,"  lege  khiirj-in. 
198,  in  f.n.  2,  pro  "  Stonehenge's  Book  of  the  Horse,"  lege  The  Horse  in  the  Stable  and  tlie  Field,  by  Stone- 

henge. 
254,  inscription  under  full-page  illustration, /;'<?  "Collin,"  lege  Colin. 
256,  n  II  II  pro  "  Major-General  M.,"  lege  General  M.  J. 


BOOK     FIRST 


COUNTRY    OF    THE     ARABIAN 


The   Arabian    Horse. 


CHAPTER     I. 


PRELIMINARY. 


UR  subject  is  the  Horse  of  the  land,  not  the  land  of  the  Horse;  yet  in 
treating  of  the  Arabian,  the  first  step  must  be  an  attentive  survey  of  the 
soil  which  j'ields  him. 

"  |^£  Mjo  toill  tije  poet  sec 
JHust  m  tlje  poet's  rountrg  bz," 

says  Goethe.  For  others  than  Arabs  the  Arabian  horse  is  apt  to  be  more  a 
creature  of  the  imagination  than  of  observation  or  experience.  Even  when  one 
thinks  of  specimens  which  have  actually  come  before  him,  such  may  either  not  have 
been  strictly  speaking  Arabians,  or,  otherwise,  Arabians  of  that  high  and  typical 
deeree  of  excellence  which  is  not  met  with  oftener  than  once  or  twice  in  a  lifetime. 

The  farther  afield  we  travel,  the  broader  and  firmer  our  view  becomes  of  the 
power  or  force  of  "  the  environment,"  especially  climate,  in  moulding  plants  and 
animals ;  and  considering  how  constantly  this  belief  will  keep  showing  itself  in 
these  pages,  it  seems  best  to  begin  by  stating  it.  The  Eastern  mind,  as  is  well 
known,  has  stood  since  time  began  till  now  at  the  stage  when  the  abstract  is  lost 
in  the  concrete.  The  Arabs,  when  they  would  speak  of  what  we  call  "  climatic  con- 
ditions," sum  them  up  under  the  general  name  oi  AL  Md-e,  or  the  water.  Similarly 
the  Persians,  and  after  them  Indian  Muslim,  when  they  would  talk  of  the  same 
occult  agencies,  set  them  all  down  to  Ab  iva  Ha-wd — i.e.,  water  and  air;  soil  prob- 
ably forming  in  their  minds  part  of  one  and  the  same  idea  with  the  water  which 
dissolves  it.     Speaking  of  the  skyey  element  in  climate,  when  Count  de   Lagrange 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


named  Foig  a  Ballagh's  famous  daughter  " Fille  de  rair"  he  followed  an  idea  which 
runs  through  ancient  poetry  and  mythology.  According  to  the  Grecian  poets, 
it  was  the  wind  that  impregnated  the  mares  of  Thessaly — the  cracks  or  "  fliers  " 
of  their  epoch.  Early  Arabian  tradition  delights  in  the  same  fancy.  The  epithet 
"  daughters  of  the  air  "  is  said  to  have  been  applied  by  the  Prophet  Muhammad  ^ 
to  certain  highly  vaunted  mares.  It  is  even  fabled  that  the  Most  High,  when, 
before  creating  man  out  of  wet  earth,  He  willed  that  the  horse  should  be, 
commanded  the  south  wind  to  condense  itself;  and  on  a  handful  of  the  plastic 
matter  thus  obtained  being  presented  to  Him  by  the  Spirit  Jab-ra-il,^  or  Jab-ril 
• — angel  of  revelation  of  Kuranic  story — made  from  it  a  dark  bay  or  dark  chest- 
nut— in  Arabic  kii,-mait.  Our  only  object  in  here  introducing  this  very  ancient 
material  is  to  illustrate  the  sure  truth  which  appears  in  it,  like  one  of  those  glimpses 
of  sound  natural  history  in  Aristotle  and  Pliny,  that  Heaven's  free  air  forms  a  very 
great  factor  in  the  development  of  vigorous  animals.  Horses  which  are  bred  upon 
open  plains  will  always  be  better  travellers  than  stable-bred  ones.  With  regard 
to  the  element  of  water,  the  ground  is  not  less  sure.  Among  things  that  strike 
us  in  the  East,  one  is  the  stress  which  is  laid  by  people  everywhere  on  the 
natural  qualities  of  the  water  ;  and  another,  their  apathy  about  its  being  kept 
from  contamination.  Good  water,  they  seem  to  think,  can  never  be  turned  into 
bad,  or  bad  into  good,  by  anything  that  man  or  beast  can  do  to  it.  Healing 
springs  are  still  resorted  to  as  believingly  as  in  the  time  of  Naaman  ^  the 
Syrian  leper ;  and  on  water  more  perhaps  than  on  any  other  element  or  agency 
are  thought  by  them  to  wait  health  and  disease,  longevity  and  premature  decay, 


1  The  above  reference  to  this  greatest  figure  in 
Arabian  history  may  be  taken  advantage  of  to  ex- 
plain the  sense  in  which  he  is  a  "  Prophet."  Not 
confined  to  our  day,  but  on  the  contrary  very  ancient, 
is  the  conception  associzting  the /ore/eik'u£- qf  events 
with  the  prophetic  voice  ;  but  in  speaking  of  Muham- 
mad, this  idea  has  to  be  discarded  ;  Al  Is-LAM  is  never 
tired  of  inculcating  that  ike  future  is  k7io'wn  to  God 
only;  and  no  Arab  will  so  much  as  say  in  the  morning 
that  it  will  rain  before  night.  The  two  Kuranic  terms 
translated  Prophet  are  Na-bi  and  Ra-siil.  Both  words 
were  fixed  in  Arabic  long  before  the  Kur-an,  with 
practically  the  same  signification  :  ra-sill,  oiie  who 
carries  on  by  consecutive  progressions  the  relation  of 
the  tidings  of  liiin  who  has  sent  him  —  i.  e.,  our 
apostle  J  na-bi  (in  Arabia,  whatever  it  may  have 
meant  in  Canaan,  and  afterwards  in  the  religion  of 
Israel),  one  who  informs  others,  or  perhaps  one  who 
is  himself  informed,  respectitig  the  Divine.  And 
as  showing  how  in  these  days  knowledge  is  ad- 
vancing, we  obser\'e  an  eminent  Scottish  theologian 


teaching  that  in  this  sense  Muhammad  was  a  Prophet. 
"  Certainl)',"  writes  Professor  Marcus  Dods,  D.D.,  in 
Muhammad,  Buddha,  a?id  Christ,  p.  17,  "he  had  two 
of  the  most  important  characteristics  of  the  prophetic 
order.  He  saw  truth  about  God  which  his  fellow-men 
did  not  see  ;  and  he  had  an  irresistible  inward  impulse 
to  publish  this  truth." 

^  The  Biblical  "  Gabriel" — in  Hebrew,  Gods  man. 
Muslim  believe  that  in  the  "Night  of  Power" — the 
night  of  the  month  Ra-ma-dhan  in  which  Muhammad 
received  his  first  "  revelations  " — the  whole  body  of 
the  "  eternal  and  uncreated  "  Kur-an  was  miraculously 
injected,  straight  from  the  "  sacred  tablet "  in  the 
seventh  or  highest  heaven  hard  by  God's  throne,  into 
the  heart  of  this  chief  of  the  angelic  hierarchy,  for 
enunciation  to  the  Prophet  as  occasion  required,  from 
out  the  lowest  heavenly  vault.  Yet  further  eminence 
belongs  to  Jab-ra-il  as  the  "  Holy  Spirit,"  or  "  Spirit 
of  Truth,"  of  Al  Kur-an. 

5  The  name  Na'-man  is  common  among  Arabs 
still. 


CHAP.   I. 


PRELIMINARY. 


fecundity  and  barrenness,  comeliness  of  form  and  feature  and  sallow  skinniness.^ 
Supposing  the  Arabs  ever  to  grow  civilised  enough  to  take  up  horse-breeding 
on  stud -farm  principles,  the  first  thing  which  they  would  look  for,  in  selecting 
runs  or  sites,  would  be  what  they  call  "strong  water  "^ — that  is,  water  proved 
by  experience  to  favour  animal  growth.  Our  readers  may  consider  this  view  too 
fully  established  to  require  illustration  ;  but  the  mention  of  it  recalls  how  remark- 
ably, in  the  course  of  a  journey  of  over  two  thousand  miles,  made  in  1886-87 
across  the  great  river- valleys  of  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates,  the  horses  and 
mules  improved  during  halts  in  some  localities  more  than  in  others.  One  such  spot 
was  Sin-jar,  now  an  Ottoman  station,  as  of  old  a  Roman  outpost,  holding  in  check 
the  Sin-jar  mountains,  by  which  the  steppe  between  the  middle  reaches  of  the  two 
rivers  is  divided  into  a  northern  and  southern  portion.  On  encamping  beside  the 
town  or  ba-Iad,  the  capital  a  thousand  years  ago  of  a  prosperous  Arab  principality, 
but  now  dwindled  to  at  most  two  hundred  houses,  the  animals  seemed  almost 
exhausted.  Sin-jar  afforded  them  no  luxuries;  no  shelter  from  the  January  blasts; 
nothing  but  the  stony  ground  to  lie  on  ;  no  green  food  or  carrots  ;  only  the  inva- 
riable chopped  straw  and  barley,  with  water  in  abundance.  Yet  it  was  amazing 
how  they  recovered.  We  had  taken  with  us  several  valuable,  or  at  all  events 
highly  valued,  desert  colts,  merely  to  keep  them  moving,  and  favour  their  grow- 
ing into  horses  of  note.  These  in  particular,  after  a  fortnight  of  Sin-jar,  looked 
new  creatures  :  never  before  or  afterwards  did  they  appear  so  promising  as  on  the 
winter  morning  when  their  Arab  grooms  rode  them  with  us  out  of  Sin-jar.  The 
virtues  of  the  ground  were  attributed  by  the  dwellers  on  it  to  its  water,  drawn 
chiefly  from  champagne-like  brooks,  which,  after  issuing  out  of  springs  and  water- 
ing a  few  miles  of  cultivation,  lost  themselves  in  the  thirsty  soil.  The  men  and 
women  of  Sin-jar,  though  living  on  poverty's  brink,  and  not  unacquainted  with 
starvation,  bore  witness  equally  with  their  cattle  to  the  excellence  of  its  climate. 
Most  of  the  inhabitants  are  Kurds ;  and  the  traveller  has  uncommon  opportunities 
of  admiring  their  physique,  owing  to  the  unconcerned  manner  in  which  their 
wives  and  daughters  strip  to  bathe  by  the  margin  of  their  little  river.  Nothing 
could  be  more  Arcadian,  or  at  the  same  time  chaster,  than  the  method  of  their 
ablutions ;  their  radiant  black  tresses  forming,  in  the  postures  which  the  nymphs 
assume  while  they  pour  the  water  over  one  another  with  cups,  far  more  modest 


^  Easterns  send  as  far  for  water  as  English- 
men for  wine  or  brandy.  Herodotus  relates  how 
Persian  monarchs,  wherever  they  went,  would  keep 
themselves  supphed  through  couriers  with  draughts 
from  the  Choaspes,  perhaps  the  modern  Karkha, 
western  boundary  of  Persia  ;  Burckhardt,  how  JMe- 
hemet  A'li,  in  his  campaigns  in  Arabia,  had  water 


from  the  Nile  delivered  daily  at  his  tent.  The 
princes  and  nobles  of  India  maintain  the  same 
wholesome  practice.  To  all  this  the  West,  as  usual, 
abounds  in  contrasts.  Once  we  heard  a  young  gen- 
tleman fresh  from  Rugby  say  that  water  was  meant 
only  to  wash  in  ! 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


drapings  than  the  bathing-  -  dresses  and  transparencies  of  later  stages  of  civi- 
lisation.^ A  large  house  overhangs  the  part  of  the  stream  resorted  to  ;  while, 
skirting  the  spot,  and  leading  across  the  river,  is  one  of  the  approaches  to  the 
town.  But  the  bathers  show  the  finest  unconsciousness ;  nor  do  others  notice 
them  any  more  than  if  they  were  water-hens.^  Turks  and  Persians  new  to  Kurdt 
and  Ya-zi-di  manners,  when  they  come  on  such  a  tableau,  exclaim,  "  Out  upon 
the  ka-firs ! "  An  old-school  Pasha  sent  to  govern  Sin-jar  would,  we  make  no 
doubt,  if  he  did  not  empty  the  town  the  sooner,  "civilise"  its  ladies  with  whip 
and  slipper.  But  even  in  Turkey  the  times  grow  easier.  The  present  Sin-jar 
governor  has  found  out  a  better  system — when  he  passes  he  looks  another  way.^ 
Sin-jar,  though  familiar  ground  to  Arab  nomads,  is  reckonable  not  to  Arabia 
but  to  "  Mesopotamia,"  a  term  which  will  be  spoken  of  further  on.  The  reader 
will  not,  therefore,  place  to  the  credit  of  Arabia  the  happy  effect  on  animal  life 
of  the  Sin-jar  climate ;  that  having  merely  been  noticed  by  way  of  showing  how, 
in  the  East  as  well  as  in  the  West,  soils  and  waters  favourable  to  horses  often 
run  conterminous  with  others  the  reverse.  The  climate  of  Arabia  proper,  while 
improving,  naturally,  as  one  rises  higher  above  the  sea,  is  on  the  whole  remarkable 
for  its  intensity.  Hence  the  force  and  clearness  with  which  its  physical  features 
reflect  themselves  in  its  characteristics. 

"  'Tis  the  hard  grey  weather 
Breeds  hard  Enghshmen," 

says  Kingsley.  Similarly  in  Arabia  do  even  its  institutions,  not  excepting  its 
religion,  certainly,  too,  its  history,  and  most  of  all  its  living  creatures,  speak  to  us 


"■  Nature's  crowning  the  human  head,  especially  in 
females,  with  a  covering  capable  of  being  let  down  to 
form  a  canopy,  is  very  wonderful.  Without  going 
back  to  Eve,  who,  if  she  had  been  thus  equipped, 
would  not  have  needed  a  leafy  cincture,  wherever  we 
look,  outside  of  civilisation,  we  see  the  same  ampli- 
tude of  natural  drapery  in  woman.  Among  Sir  H. 
Rawlinson's  Cabul  ?iotanda  (1838-40)  was  a  ka-fir 
slave  from  the  pagan  land  north  of  Afghan-istan,  who, 
"by  loosening  her  golden  hair,  could  cover  herself 
completely  from  head  to  foot  as  with  a  veil." — (Ency. 
Brit..,  9th  edit,  vol.  xiii.  p.  S22.)  An  Arabian  writer, 
describing  a  sleeping  beauty  wrapped  in  her  tresses, 
uses  the  same  word  as  he  would  have  done  for  wrapped 
in  a  blmiket.  In  the  lower  animals,  we  know,  long- 
haired equally  with  short-haired  breeds  are  produc- 
ible. Yet  even  in  their  case  the  tendency  of  "high 
breeding"  is  to  thin  the  hairy  covering.  Just  as  cer- 
tainly in  the  human  species  decadence  of  the  hair 
waits  on  civilisation.  If  Ka-fir,  Kurdi,  or  paysanne 
from  Southern  France  were  to  be  transplanted  to  a 


European  capital,  all  its  hairdi-essers,  brushes  and 
combs  and  unguents,  would  hardly  save  her  children 
from  having  to  eke  out  Nature's  failing  bounties  with 
"combings"  and  "raw  material"  brought  from  vari- 
ous quarters. 

^  The  reader  who  is  interested  in  the  manners  of 
different  countries  at  different  periods  may  compare, 
or  contrast,  with  the  above  description  the  observa- 
tions of  an  English  traveller  in  Mid-Lothian  in  1704; 
an  exti^act  from  whose  Tour  was  published  in  one 
of  the  earliest  numbers  of  '  Blackwood's  Magazine ' 
(February  1818). 

^  Between  our  visit  and  those  of  Layard  (1843  and 
1850),  Sin-jar,  we  believe,  had  seen  no  European.  In 
1838,  Mr  Forbes,  Bomb.  Med.  Staff,  explored  it,  and 
in  1816  Mr  J.  S.  Buckingham.  V.  in  Jou7:  Roy. 
Geograph.  Soc,  vol.  ix.  Part  iii.,  former's  "Visit  to 
the  Sin-jar  Hills,  with  some  Account  of  the  Sect  of 
Ya-zi-dis  ; "  and  in  op.  cit.,  in  Catalog.  No.  30,  vol.  i., 
lattefs  narrative.  Dr  E.  A.  W.  Budge  of  the  British 
Museum  has  been  there  more  recently. 


CHAP.   I. 


PRELIMINARY. 


of  its  alternating  droughts  and  tornadoes ;  simooms  and  upland  breezes ;  burning 
sands  and  juicy  pastures.  And  here  occur  two  views  of  Arabia  and  the  Ara- 
bian horse  which,  before  setting  out  on  the  geographical  survey  next  awaiting 
us,  it  may  be  useful  to  consider.  One  is  the  claim  often  put  forward  on  behalf 
of  Arabia  to  be  regarded  as  the  primeval  habitat  of  the  Horse;  the  other,  the 
common  idea  of  the  same  country  being  rich  in  horses.  First,  let  us  speak 
of  the  probability,  or  possibility,  of  Arabia's  ever  having  contained  wild  horses. 
To  do  the  Arabs  justice,  this  is  not  their  idea.  The  paternity  of  it  belongs 
to  Europeans,  beginning  probably  with  the  imaginative  Buffon,  and  brought 
down  to  date  by  Mr  Blunt.  On  the  one  hand,  the  great  French  naturalist 
pictured  to  himself  the  boundless  spaces  of  Araby,  and  the  perfection  to  which 
the  horse  had  been  brought  there  :  on  the  other,  he  saw  a  gregarious  creature, 
full  of  dlan  and  velocity,  and  chiefly  dependent  for  safety  on  speed,  as  evinced 
by  his  sonorous  and  expressive  voice,  and  his  hatred  of  being  left  alone,  by 
his  power  of  covering  great  distances,  and  by  the  incredibly  short  period  in 
which  the  newly  dropped  foal  is  able  to  scour  along  after  its  dam.  And  so, 
without  dwelling  on  details  like  food  and  water,  the  conclusion  was  come  to  that 
the  one  had  been  made  by  Nature  for  the  other.  Alas  for  the  theories  of  stay-at- 
home  philosophers!  An  unkempt  Arab  who  once  piloted  us  from  Bussorah  to  Al 
Ha-sa  knew  better.  For  w^hen  a  baggage-pony  had  been  lost,  and  the  question 
of  wild  horses  thus  came  up,  his  idea  was  that  horses  divorced  from  man  could 
not  live  in  the  country  of  the  Arabs,  unless  able  to  draw  water  for  themselves 
from  deep  wells,  and  lay  in  fodder  as  the  Bedouin  does  dates.  How  this  may  have 
been  in  remoter  periods,  when  the  geological  formation  of  Arabia  may  have  been 
different  from  now,  it  does  not  concern  us  to  conjecture.  Here  we  content  ourselves 
with  noting  that  not  only  has  no  living  explorer,  or  any  one  who  has  left  a  book  of 
travels,  ever  seen  or  heard  of  a  wild  horse  in  Arabia,^  but  even  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates  valleys  are  devoid  of  those  "mobs"  of  feral  horses  so  numerous  in  Aus- 
tralia and  S.  America,  which,  though  at  the  most  only  reversions,  are  sometimes 
mistaken  ior  ferce  natui'cs.  In  regard  to  Mr  Blunt,  mentioned  above  as  favouring 
Buffon's  theory,  it  is  but  fair  to  add  that  the  facts  last  glanced  at  arrested  his 
attention,  and  that  of  the  Lady  Anne,  during  their  travels.  Mr  Blunt,  in  the 
chapter  on  horses  which  is  contributed  by  him  to  Bedouin  Tribes  of  the  E^iphi^ates^ 
is  "content  with  accepting  the  usual  belief  that  Arabia  was  one  of  the  countries 
where  the  horse  was  originally  found  in  his  wild  state,  and  where  he  was  first  caught 
and  tamed."     But  he  qualifies  this  statement  by  explaining  that  by  Arabia  he  would 


1  "  That  horses  are  to  be  found  in  a  wild  state  in 
the  deserts  of  Arabia  is  a  fallacy.  I  never  heard  of 
such  a  thing  hinted  at  in  the  desert." — Major  Upton, 


op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  4,  p.  273. 
2  Vol.  ii.  p.  245. 


8  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

not  imply  peninstdar  Arabia  ;  which  he  truly  describes  as  unsuited  to  the  horse  in 
his  natural  condition,  owing  to  scarcity  of  water  and  pasture.  Unable  to  lose  hold 
of  a  conclusion  supporting  the  idea  of  the  Arabian  forming  the  progenitor  of  all 
the  horses  in  the  world,  Mr  Blunt  then  informs  us  that  "  in  Mesopotamia  and  the 
great  pastoral  districts  bordering  on  the  Euphrates,  where  water  is  abundant  and 
pasture  perennial,"  the  "  original  stock  "  must  once  have  roamed,  and  "  the  wild  horse 
been  captured,  just  as  in  the  present  day  the  wild  ass  is  captured  and  taken  thence 
by  man  to  people  \_sic\  the  peninsula."  This  view,  especially  as  held  to  be  con- 
firmed by  the  habit  of  the  wild  ass,  will  meet  us  again.  It  may  not  be  so  impossible 
as  the  theory  which  supposes  wild  horses  to  have  existed  In  the  inaccessible  heart  of 
Arabia.  But  that  Mr  Blunt  himself  was  but  half  satisfied  with  it  appears  from  his 
subsequently  returning  to  his  first  and  favourite  standpoint.  In  a  second  journey, 
the  outcome  of  which  was  A  Pilgrimage  to  Najd,  by  Lady  A.  Blunt,  on  finding  in 
the  red  sand,  "quite  one  hundred  miles  from  any  spring,"  tracks  of  the  antelope, 
which  the  Arabs,  by  the  way,  affirm  needs  no  water,  also  signs  of  the  wolf,  fox,  and 
hyaena,  Mr  Blunt  makes  the  observation,  in  an  addendum  contributed  by  him  to  the 
record,  that  the  "  ancient  tradition  of  a  wild  horse  having  been  found  "  in  Central 
Arabia  "may  not  be  so  improbable  as  at  first  sight  it  seems."  He  at  the  same 
time  disposes  of  the  food  question  by  remarking  that  "  there  is  certainly  pasture, 
and  good  pasture,  in  every  part  of"  certain  valleys  which  he  indicates.  While,  when 
it  comes  to  water,  the  height  of  the  argument  is  reached ;  the  fact,  if  fact  it  be,  of 
the  sheep  of  Najd  needing  water  but  once  a-month  is  cited,  and  the  conjecture 
hazarded  that  the  horse  of  the  same  country  "may  have  required  no  more."^ 
One  who  can  imagine  this  can  imagine  anything.  Among  the  points  lessening 
the  horse's  usefulness  is  his  losing  so  much  moisture  through  the  skin,  and  requiring 
in  consequence  such  frequent  draughts  of  water.  Of  all  the  cattle  used  by  the 
Arabs  he  is  the  most  impatient  of  thirst — a  character  evidently  depending  on 
natural  habit,  not  subjugation,  and  indeed  going  far  to  prove  him  the  native  of  a 
different  clime.  Even  crossing  between  his  species  and  the  asinine,  while  rendering 
the  progeny  hardier,  does  not  make  it  more  independent  of  water. 

Passing  next  to  the  view  of  Arabia  forming  naturally  a  nursery  of  horses,  all 
the  facts  available  will  be  stated  with  reference  to  each  division  as  we  proceed. 
But  looking  at  the  country  as  a  whole,  let  us  understand  at  starting  that  only  an 
Eastern  poet  could  style  it  fertile.  Nothing  like  a  third  of  its  surface  is  cultivable 
without  irrigation ;  the  task  of  extending  which,  outside  of  valleys  and  natural 
oases,  probably  is  beyond  the  power  of  Turk  or  Arab.  Vast  spaces  of  unchanging 
and  unchangeable  plutonic  barrenness  spread  themselves  over  it.    Joining  themselves 

1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  12,  vol.  ii.  p.  249. 


CHAP.  I.  PRELIMINARY.  9 

to  these  are  larger  and  scarce  less  dreary  regions,  occupied  by  precipitous  frowning 
mountains,  accessible  only  to  the  goat ;  by  unwatered  tracts  of  stony  nakedness  ; 
by  labyrinthine,  sandy  ravines  or  gorges,  bearing  only  the  hardiest  shrubs  ;  and  by 
tepid,  cultivated  palm-oases,  thick  with  semi-tropical  vegetation.  Even  in  its  best 
parts,  if  we  except  the  coffee-yielding  Yemen,  pasturage  distributes  itself  grudgingly  ; 
aridity  everywhere  dogs  the  heels  of  fertility.  Worst  of  all,  perhaps,  for  horse- 
breeders,  the  mountains  of  Arabia  proper  do  not  collect  sufficient  water  to  send  out 
of  its  vast  central  plateaus  one  perennial  river,  whether  to  the  Red  Sea,  the  Gulf  of 
Persia,  or  the  Indian  Ocean.  A  travelled  wiseacre  once  remarked  on  the  habit  of 
rivers  to  turn  towards  cities  !  But  if  one  were  to  say  of  nomadic  horse-breeders  that 
wherever  the  circuit  of  their  migrations  has  not  been  traversed  by  a  river,  they  have, 
opportunity  serving,  exchanged  it  for  a  watered  territory,  Arabian  history  would 
bear  out  the  statement.  It  is  the  same  all  over  the  world.  In  the  country  of  the 
Oxus — as  many  believe  the  primeval  home  of  the  Horse;  in  England,  India,  and 
America ;  in  the  Orange  River  State  in  South  Africa ;  and  in  Australasia, — it  is  to 
be  desired  above  all  things  by  horse-breeders  that  a  never-failing  river  should  run 
through  their  pastures.^  Such  being  the  physical  features  of  the  Arab  peninsula, 
there  is  little  wonder  that  at  the  first  sight  of  it  our  countrymen  ask  themselves 
where  and  by  whom  its  far-famed  coursers  can  be  bred.  The  clearing  up  of 
this  "mystery  of  horse-breeding  in  Central  Arabia,"  as  Mr  Blunt  calls  it,-  ranks 
among  the  objects  proposed  in  this  chapter  and  the  next.  One  difficulty  is  on 
the  surface,  and  that  is  the  getting  at,  even  approximately,  the  actual  yield  of 
horses  in  past  and  present  times  in  the  country  indicated.  Here  we  quote  from 
Burckhardt  (1784-1817),  the  traveller  sharing  with  Carsten  NIebuhr  (1733-1815) 
the  merit  of  opening  up  Arabia  to  Europeans  : — 

"  It  is  a  general  but  erroneous  opinion  that  Arabia  is  very  rich  in  horses  ;  but  the  breed  is 
limited  to  the  extent  of  fertile  pasture-grounds  in  that  country,  and  it  is  in  such  parts  only  that 
horses  thrive,  while  those  Bedouins  who  occupy  districts  of  poor  soil  rarely  possess  horses.  It 
is  found,  accordingly,  that  the  tribes  most  rich  in  horses  are  those  who  dwell  in  the  compara- 
tively fertile  plains  of  Mesopotamia,  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Euphrates,  and  in  the  Syrian 
plains.  Horses  can  there  feed  for  several  of  the  spring  months  upon  the  green  grass  and  herbs 
produced  by  the  rains  in  the  valleys  and  fertile  grounds,  and  such  food  seems  absolutely 
necessary  for  promoting  the  full  growth  and  vigour  of  the  horse.  We  find  that  in  Najd 
horses  are  not  nearly  so  numerous  as  in  the  countries  before  mentioned,  and  they  become 
scarce  in  proportion  as  we  proceed  towards  the  south."  ^ 


'  And  not  only  that,  but,  confirming  the  remarks 
already  made  as  to  water,  experience  teaches  that 
all  rivers  are  not  alike.  "  The  best  of  our  horses  in 
proportion  to  his  figure,"  says  an  Australian  writer, 
"  the  most  abstemious,  stout,  and  sound,  and  the  most 
neglected  in  his  breeding,  drinks  of  the  waters  that 
flow  into  Lake  Alexandrina — that  is,  the  horses  bred 


on  the  rivers  Dariing,  Lachlan,  Bogan,  Murrumbidgee, 
and  other  tributaries  of  the  Murray,  after  they  leave 
the  mountains,  and  before  the  Murray  approaches  the 
sea." — Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  39,  p.  174. 

2  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  12,  vol.  i.  p.  158. 

^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  15,  vol.  ii.  pp.  50,  51. 


lo  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

The  soundness  of  the  above  is  not  to  be  disputed.  It  stands  to  reason 
that  the  same  physical  causes  which  have  kept  back  the  Arab  people  have  pre- 
vented the  multiplication  and  distribution  of  the  Horse  among  them  beyond  a 
certain  point.  But  it  has  to  be  remembered  of  Burckhardt  that,  though  able, 
from  his  command  of  Arabic,  and  his  painstaking  philosophical  habit,  to  inquire  suc- 
cessfully on  any  topic,  his  actual  travels,  so  far  as  his  published  journals  show, 
carried  him  no  farther  in  the  direction  of  Central  Arabia  than  about  three  hundred 
miles  inland  from  the  Red  Sea.  If  he  had  seen  one  of  the  warlike  clans  of  the 
interior,  like  the  Im-tair  or  U'tai-ba,  mustering  its  chivalry,  the  number  of  their 
mares  would  probably  have  exceeded  by  ten  or  twenty  times  what  the  accounts  of 
Yam-bla'  and  Medina  townsmen  had  prepared  him  for.  Starvation  is  the  same 
thing  everywhere ;  all  the  world  over,  drought  and  aridity,  equally  with  their 
opposites,  produce  their  inherent  effects  on  plants  and  animals.  And  yet  Nature's 
laws  are  not  so  fixed  as  to  be  beyond  the  modifying  or  controlling  power  of 
circumstances.  Accordingly,  horse-breeding  is  not  the  same  thing  everywhere.  In 
cities,  given  the  necessary  skill  and  capital,  and  it  may  proceed  pretty  much  alike 
in  one  quarter  of  the  world  as  in  another — just  as  pheasants  may  be  reared  in  cellars, 
or  salmon  in  fish-ponds.  Among  soil-bound  rural  populations  again,  the  same  art, 
as  seen  above,  has  Its  localities  assigned  to  it,  and  its  results  determined,  in  part 
by  climate.  But  no  sooner  is  it  taken  up  by  nomads  than  its  conditions  alter. 
Followers  of  the  robust  pastoral  life  are  not  to  be  stopped  by  a  bad  season.  One 
set  of  wells  or  pastures  failing  them,  they  have  but  to  move  off  with  their  flocks  and 
herds  in  search  of  others.  The  bearing  of  this  view  on  the  horse-producing  capa- 
bilities of  Arabia  is  evident.  Akin  to  it  is  the  power  which  the  horse,  like  so  many 
other  animals,  possesses  of  adapting  himself  to  new  foods.  Even  his  love  of  corn, 
let  us  bear  in  mind,  comes  to  him  as  an  acquired  taste.  His  every  feature  speaks 
of  a  grazing,  not  granivorous,  habit.  Look  at  his  mouth — what  machine  could  shave 
earth's  surface  closer  than  his  trenchant  nippers !  Not  the  most  delicate  leaf  or  seed 
escapes  his  prehensile  upper  lip  ;  which  may  sometimes  be  seen  long  enough  to 
suggest  a  rudimentary  trunk — one  fact  more  for  Darwinism.  In  two  desert  paragons 
sent  a  few  years  ago  through  Baghdad  to  Bombay,  this  peculiarity  was  so  marked 
as  greatly  to  interest  the  Surgeon  of  the  British  Consulate.  One  of  them  especially, 
when  he  spied  a  green  tuft  behind  a  stone,  would  curl  his  snout  round  it,  pre- 
cisely as  his  brother  pachyderm  would  his  more  perfected  proboscis.  We  never 
learned  whether  he  proved  a  race-horse.  If  he  did  so,  he  had  but  to  shoot  out 
his  long  elastic  upper  lip  on  the  winning-post,  to  enrich  turf  language  with  the 
new  expression  of  "  won  by  a  lip  "  ;  from  all  which  excruciatingly  near  things  may 
even  the  harshest  critic  be  delivered ! 

Equally  indicative  of  his   habit  is   the  horse's  foot.       The   Arabic    language, 


CHAP.  I.  PRELIMINARY 


II 


with  its  way  of  making  names  descriptive,  calls  this  his  hd-fir  or  digger — our  hoof; 
and  truly  it  forms  for  him  spade,  shovel,  and  bludgeon  in  one.  On  the  Mongolian 
steppes  he  scrapes  away  the  snow  with  it,  so  as  to  get  at  the  vegetation  ;  or  in 
summer,  when  the  earth  is  sun-baked,  ploughs  into  it  in  quest  of  roots.  The 
association  of  ideas  cleaves  to  him  even  in  his  stall  in  England  ;  as  shown  by  the 
way  in  which  he  paws  at  feeding-time,  unmindful  of  the  stable  floor.  This  last-men- 
tioned trait  suggests  it  to  us  to  notice  how  in  more  important  ways  the  horse, 
when  reduced  to  servitude,  reminds  us  that  he  is  herbivorous.  Thus,  in  Australia 
horses  will  carry  the  heaviest  riders  thousands  of  miles  without  once  tasting  corn, 
and  be  bigger  after  than  before  it,  if  only  the  bivouacs  where  the  nightly  tea-kettle 
is  set  a-boiling  yield,  as  they  generally  do,  plenty  of  grass.  This  first  want  of  the 
horse  appears  in  every  campaign.  The  commissariat  may  lay  in  as  much  barley 
as  ever  it  likes  ;  but  without  plenty  of  hay  or  grass,  the  horses  and  transport- 
animals  wall  fall  off.  In  an  Indian  light  cavalry  regiment  ^  famed  in  Afghan- 
istan for  its  working  power,  each  trooper  carried  at  his  cantle  a  net  which  he 
filled  with  grass,  were  it  but  from  the  roadsides,  as  often  as  he  had  the  chance, 
so  that  a  ration  of  it  was  ready  for  the  horses  at  every  halt.  Even  in  ordinary 
circumstances,  perhaps  if  more  care  were  bestowed  on  the  grass  or  hay,  and  the 
corn  reduced,  good  would  follow. 

Let   us    next    observe    the    readiness   with    which    the    horse    adapts    himself 
to    different    diets    under   different   masters.       See    him    first    among    the    civilised 
and    luxurious,    drifted    almost    as    far   away  as    the    furthest  from    the    primitive 
maxim    that   the    more    simply    life    is    sustained    the    better.       Not   content   with 
his    oats    and    beans,   his    water    thickened   with    meal,    and    his   grass    made    into 
sound  old  hay,  there  is  hardly  anything  for  which  he  may  not  conceive  a  fancy, 
from   roast-meat  to  sweet  biscuits.      See    him    among    the    robber   Turk-u-mans, 
or   after  being    drafted    into   the    service    of   their   Russian   conquerors,   how  with 
raid  or  expedition,    pursuit   or   flight,   in   front   of  him,  he   asks   for  nothing   more 
than  a  piece  of  raw  and  juicy  beef  wrapped  round   the    mouthpiece   of  his   bit. 
Or  see  him  in  Arabia.      In  no  other  part  of  the  world — none  at  least  where  he 
has  been   so  perfected^does   necessity   introduce  him   to   such   novelties    of  diet. 
Truth  to  tell,  both  the  Arab  and  his  horse  eat  just  what  is  to  be  got ;  and  judgino- 
from  the  effect  produced  on  them,  it  would  be  well  if  more  of  us  did  the  same. 
The  first  Highland  hut  entered  by  Dr  Johnson  in  his  famous  "Journey"  was  that 
of  an  old  woman,  who  informed  him   that   in   spring,  when   the  goats   gave  milk, 
her    five    children    could   live   without    oatmeal,    which    she    considered    expensive 
food !     The  parallel  of  this  in  Arab  tent-life  will  offer  itself  in  another  chapter  in 


1  Central  India  Horse. 


12 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


respect  of  camel's  milk.  Meanwhile,  speaking  of  solids,  the  corn  /«;'  excellence  of 
Bad-u  land  is  the  date  fruit.  Farther  north  than  about  A'na  on  the  Euphrates,  the 
date-palm^  does  not  bear;  but  in  Arabia  proper,  horses  know  the  taste  of  its 
luscious  fruit  as  well  as  that  of  barley.  On  the  shores  of  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Gulf 
of  Persia,  fish,  both  fresh  and  dried,  are  given  to  horses.  They  who  hold  with  the 
philosopher-poet  of  Persia,  Sa'-di,  that  "  the  travelled  deal  hugely  in  fables,"  may  be 
inclined  to  doubt  this.      Nay,  say  we  with  Sa'-di's  great-great-grandfather — 

"  Travellers  ne'er  did  lie  ; 
Though  fools  at  home  condemn  them." 

And,  in  truth,  numerous  books  mention  the  same  fact — for  example,  the  journal 
of  a  French  naval  officer,  who  visited  Shetland  in  the  seventeenth  century.  "  The 
horses,"  says  the  lieutenant,  "  are  no  bigger  than  donkeys,  with  large  heads  and 
badly  shaped  bodies.  They  [the  Shetlanders]  catch  a  great  quantity  of  cod, 
which  they  dry,  without  salt,  by  the  cold ;  the  heads  and  bones  of  these  they 
dry  thoroughly,  and  pound,  and  give  to  their  cattle  instead  of  corn."  -  This  may 
prepare  the  reader  for  what  has  next  to  be  added,  of  how  in  Central  Arabia  the 
locust  is  made  into  provender.  This  gigantic  grasshopper — in  Arabic  ja-rdd,  or 
stripper — enters  much  into  the  life  of  the  Arabs.  Their  poets  mention  him  side  by 
side  with  the  wild  ass  and  the  ostrich.  He  is  not  forbidden  to  Muslim,  though  all 
Arabs  do  not  think  him  eatable, — a  fact  perhaps  due  to  different  species  visiting 
different  districts,  or  to  the  flavour  varying  with  their  food.  Once,  towards  Central 
Arabia,  we  were  served  with  locusts.  Thinking  of  John  the  Baptist,  whose  pecu- 
liarities of  costume  and  diet,  equally  with  his  eloquence  and  courage,  all  speak  of 
nurture  in  the  Arabian  desert,  we  did  our  best,  but  failed.  Roasted,  they  eat  like 
sawdust ;  boiled,  like  stewed  snails.  Yet  once  upon  a  time,  according  to  desert  story, 
a  single  locust  fed  an  army  ;  when  the  hoopoe  ^  invited  Solomon  to  a  banquet 
on  a  barren  island,  and  on  the  guests  arriving  soared  aloft,  caught  a  locust,  broke 
it   up,    and   dropped   it   in  the  sea,   exclaiming,   "Eat,    O    Prophet  of  God!    they 


'  PJianix  dactylifera — alma  mate]-  of  all  Arabia. 
At  least  a  hundred  varieties  of  this  tree,  each  distin- 
guishable by  its  fruit,  grow  around  Medina.  They  who 
know  the  date  merely  as  one  of  the  superfluities  of 
European  tables,  little  imagine  what  a  compendium 
of  all  food  it  forms  for  Arabs.  Trade-returns  show 
the  importation  of  it  into  England  greatly  to  exceed 
the  apparent  consumption  ;  and  one  explanation  of 
this  may  be  its  use  in  the  manufacture  of  cattle  foods 
and  Revalenta  arabica.  It  is  also  said  that  our 
mining  population  know  what  a  repairer  of  human 
tissue  and  stamina  the  date  is. 

^  Journal  du  Corsaire  Jean  Doublet  de  Honjlcur, 


lieutenant  dc  fregate  sons  Louis  XIV.     Paris:   1S84. 

^  Asiatic  fable  occupies  itself  with  the  hoopoe,  as  our 
own  does  with  Robin  Redbreast.  In  the  Kur-an,  she 
acts  as  courier  between  Solomon  and  the  South 
Arabian  queen  who  visited  him.  Traditionalists  say 
that  Solomon  had  her  from  Ophir  ;  that  her  crest  was 
of  gold  ;  that  for  the  sake  of  it  she  was  in  danger  of 
extermination ;  that  she  then  petitioned  Solomon, 
among  whose  miraculous  endowments,  according 
both  to  Jewish  and  Arabian  legend,  was  the  power 
of  understanding  the  speech  of  all  beasts  and  birds  ; 
and  that  the  result  was  the  changing  of  her  golden 
crown  into  a  plume  of  feathers  of  equal  beauty. 


CHAP.  I.  PRELIMINARY.  13 

who  get  none  of  the  meat  are  sure  at  least  of  the  broth  ! " — to  this  day  proverbial 
with  Arabs.  The  reception  which  awaits  a  "  dropping  from  the  clouds  "  of  locusts 
differs  widely  in  different  places.  Towards  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates,  the 
object  is  to  prevent  their  eggs  from  being  deposited,  or,  if  too  late  for  that,  to 
destroy  them  ;  so  that  they  may  not  be  hatched  in  spring,  when  the  crops  are 
ripening.  Here  and  there,  an  old-fashioned  Mulla  may  utter  a  protest  against 
coming  between  insects  sent  by  God  and  their  appointed  work ;  but  in  these  modern 
times,  the  Governments  even  of  Baghdad  and  Mosul  have  grown  distinctly  secular ; 
and  in  garrison  towns  the  soldiers  are  employed  in  winter  camping-out  to  dig  for 
spawn.  A  poll-tax,  payable  in  bushels  of  larvje,  is  imposed  on  the  inhabitants  ; 
and  business  halts  while  all  who  cannot  afford  to  collect  their  quotas  by  proxy 
rush  over  the  country  like  crusaders,   often  with  music  and  banners, 

"  To  extirpate  the  vipers."  ^ 

As  so  often  happens  in  Turkey,  the  result  is  mostly  of  the  "  much -cry  -  and - 
little -wool"  order.  In  due  time  the  locusts  issue,  at  first  very  like  tadpoles. 
Myriads  of  them  then  overspread  the  desert.  The  mazy  dances  which  they 
indulge  in  when  first  they  feel  their  wings,  half-jumping,  half- flying,  one  inch 
from  the  ground  to-day,  and  two  inches  to-morrow,  with  the  buzzing  made  by 
them,  give  one  almost  a  feeling  of  dizziness  as  he  passes  over  them.  The 
peasant's  only  chance  is  to  cut  his  crops,  ripe  or  unripe,  before  these  harpies  are 
strong  enough  to  seize  them.  The  prevailing  belief  is,  that  the  locusts  die, 
and  are  eaten  by  birds,  after  they  have  laid  their  eggs.  The  May  winds  often  blow 
millions  of  them  half-torpid  into  towns,  carrying  them  even  into  the  inner  rooms 
of  houses.  But  whether  all  thus  perish,  or  flights  of  them  depart  with  the  storks 
and  swallows,  they  generally  leave  their  eggs  behind.  The  only  thing  for  it  is 
patience,  till  some  year,  as  is  sure  to  happen,  the  two  great  rivers  overflow,  and, 
turning  miles  of  dry  land  into  sea,  bring  a  Noah's  flood  on  the  seed  of  the  locusts. 
How  different  the  welcome  given  to  the  same  visitants  in  the  arid  parts  of  middle 
Arabia !  Everywhere  the  fat  have  much  to  fear  which  the  lean  have  not ;  and  the 
voracious  pest  of  cultivators  forms  a  precious  resource  of  nomads.  When  the 
rustling  of  their  wings  is  heard  in  the  sky,  every  tent  wakes  up.  "  With  all  the  body 
turned  into  an  eye,"  as  Persians  say,  men  and  women  keep  gazing,  and,  if  the  cloud 
settles,  fall  on  it  eagerly.  In  a  short  time,  piles  of  locusts,  stripped  of  their  wings 
and  legs,  and  roasted  in  holes  in  the  sand,  cover  the  ground.  These  are  dried, 
made  into  powder,  and  stored  in  sacks.  If  saved  from  damp,  powdered  locust 
will  keep  good  for  years.      Not  only  does  this  yield  as  animal  food  much  nutritive 

'  Bon  Caiiltier. 


14 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 


matter ;  it  has  the  great  advantage  of  being  easily  carried.  Arabs  consider  one 
measure  of  it  equal  to  two  of  barley;  and  thus,  among  the  many  compensatory 
arrangements  of  Nature's  plan  it  has  to  be  reckoned  that  within  the  Arab  peninsula 
an  acre  of  sullen  wilderness  may  yield  in  a  moment,  without  forethought  or  labour, 
a  richer  supply  for  men  and  cattle  than  the  plough  could  wring  from  it  if  it  were 
corn-land. 

The  several  views  which  we  have  been  illustrating  should  now  be  fully 
before  the  reader ;  at  least,  if  they  are  not,  we  do  not  know  how  to  elucidate 
them  further.  The  first  is,  that  the  Arabian  horse  greatly  follows  the  Arabian 
climate;  the  second,  that  the  epithet  of  "horse-pasturing"  bestowed  on  ancient 
Argos  by  Homer  is  but  little  applicable  to  Arabia;  the  third,  that  if,  nevertheless, 
it  forms  a  mother  of  horses,  the  explanation  lies  partly  in  the  migratory  impulse 
of  the  Arab  race,  and  partly  in  the  horse's  aptitude  to  thrive  and  multiply  on 
so  many  different  kinds  of  food. 


15 


CHAPTER    II. 


DEFINITIONS. 


FOREIGN  words  are  being  explained,  it  will  be  noticed,  partly  in  the  text  and 
partly  in  footnotes.  Further  information  of  the  same  kind  is  contained  in 
Index  I.  But  there  are  terms  requiring  immediate  treatment  ;  and  the  present 
chapter  will  be  given  to  these,  so  that  different  readers  may  not  understand  them 
differently. 

At  least  two  such  names  have  been  already  used  :  Bedouin,  and  Desert. 

The  former  is  one  of  the  key-words  of  these  pages.  In  Index  I.  it  is  shown, 
under  Bad-w,  how  Bedotdn  comes  into  European  languages.  Its  common  mean- 
ing follows  so  far  its  derivation.  Etymologically,  the  Bedouin  ^  are,  they  who  keep  to 
undemarcated  spaces,  or  open  country ;  also  of,  or  belonging  to,  such  places,  or  to 
their  inhabitants.  The  opposite  designation  is  Ha-dha-ri — one  or  more  whose  location 
is  in  definite  areas,  especially  in  towns  or  villages.  Of  all  possible  divisions  of  the 
inhabitants  of  Arabia,  this  is  at  once  the  most  comprehensive,  the  most  apparent, 
and  the  most  important.  We  at  least,  as  just  now  hinted,  have  to  carry  it  with 
us  from  title-page  to  finis.  Hardly  a  statement  can  be  made  about  the  Arabs, 
certainly  not  about  their  horses,  which  shall  be  applicable  equally  to  the  wandering 
and  the  settled.  Strictly,  the  division  should  be  threefold.  First,  they  who  hold 
absolutely  to  the  moving  life.  Then,  the  dingers  to  the  soil,  Ahhi  't  tin,  or 
clodhoppers — perhaps  rather,  people  of  clay,  in  the  sense  of  building  homesteads 
of  it,  followers  of  the  noble  industry  —  "  the  invention  of  gods  and  the  occupation 
of  heroes."  ^  Finally,  townsmen,  whose  wealth  has  taken  on  other  forms  than 
sheep  and  cattle ;  whose  trust  is  in  walls  and  governments,  not  mares  and  razzias? 
But   for    our  present    purpose,    peasants   {fal-ldh,    pi.  fal-ld-hin)  and   townsmen, 


^  Classically,  Ba-da-wi;  often  pronounced,  esp.  in 
Prak,  Ba-du-ivi.  In  these  pages,  following  the  best 
spoken  form,  we  shall  use  Bad-ii. 


^  Lord  Beaconsfield. 

3  V.  in  Index  I.,  Ghaz-u. 


i6  COUNTRY   OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

shading  into  one  another  as  they  do  by  imperceptible  gradations,  may  be  taken 
together. 

It  was  just  now  stated  that  of  all  the  divisions  of  the  Arab  race,  that  being 
here  noticed  was  the  most  inclusive.  And  this,  in  truth,  forms  its  weak  point.  It 
is  too  extensive  to  be  scientific.  A  good  many  explanations  and  qualifications  are 
necessary  before  it  can  be  safely  applied.  Thus,  one  modern  writer — Palgrave 
— in  his  first  chapter  leaps  boldly  to  the  conclusion  that  "a  fair  specimen  of  the 
genuine  and  unalloyed  Bedouin  species  "  are  the  half-savage  hordes  of  the  Sha- 
ra-rat,  whose  di-ras,  or  circles  of  migration,  lie  in  and  around  the  great  approach  to 
Central  Arabia  from  the  north-west.^  No  one  will  dispute  that  these  Sha-ra-rat 
are  nomads — nomads  of  the  lowest  type.  But  ask  over  all  Arabia  whether  they 
be  Bedouin,  and  the  answer  will  be  No.  Even  their  claim  to  rank  as  Arabs  is 
uncertain.  Compared  with  the  indescribable  motley  of  Kurds,  Persians,  Indians, 
Africans,  Chaldeans,  Jews,  Turk-u-m^ns,  Syrians,  Armenians,  Greeks,  Copts, 
Albanians,  and  others  mixing  itself  with  Arabs  in  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates  valleys, 
the  population  of  Central  Arabia,  especially  Najd,  exhibits  many  features  of  homo- 
geneousness.  Yet  it,  too,  is  composite.  Apart  even  from  modern  inundations, 
chiefly  pilgrims,  and  apart  from  the  Osmanli,  ethnic  chips  of  high  antiquity  trace- 
able to  no  known  branch  of  the  Arab  stem  —  home-born  aliens,  between  whom 
and  Arabs  of  the  blood  there  is  no  intermarrying — are  scattered  over  it ;  and  of 
such  are  the  Sha-ra-rat.  This  allusion  to  the  Arab  view  of  a  race  distinction 
being  in  the  name  of  Bedouin,  just  as  in  Scotland  a  race  distinction  is  in  the 
name  of  Highlander,  is  here  only  preliminary.  What,  if  any,  traces  offer  of  an 
ultimate  diversity  of  blood  underlying,  or  running  parallel  with,  the  divergence  of 
habit  distinguishing  Ba-da-wi  from  Ha-dha-ri,  will  demand  inquiry  further  on  ;  in 
connection  mainly  with  the  theory  which  derives  the  wandering  Arabs  from 
Ishmael.  Meanwhile,  the  outstanding  fact  is  noted,  that  swarms  such  as  the 
Sha-ra-rat  by  no  means  are  authentic  specimens  of  the  Bedouin  stock. 

But  further,  and  equally  important.  If  not  every  roaming  camel-breeder 
be  a  Bedouin,  except  in  the  bare  etymological  sense  to  which  in  the  case  of 
special  terms  it  is  useless  to  cling,  neither  does  every  Bedouin  exhibit  fully  the 
nomad  habit.  Especially  in  the  towns  of  Najd,  families  of  well-kept  desert 
lineage  are  settled  :  some  wedded  to  commerce ;  others  forming  part  of  the 
entourage  of  one  of  their  own  kith  and  kindred  who  is  pushing  his  fortunes.  With 
all  their  contempt  for  ploughing,  the  bluest-blooded  of  desert  clansmen  dearly  love 
a  trading  enterprise.  From  very  early  times  the  favourite  outlets  for  the  master- 
ful qualities  and  irrepressible  spirit  of  pastoral  shekhlings  have  lain  in  this  direc- 

"■   Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  7,  vol.  i,  p.  ic. 


CHAP.   II. 


DEFINITIONS. 


17 


tion.  Next  to  leading  a  g/ia.z-21,  nothing-  suits  a  Bad-u  better  than  "  personally 
conducting  "  a  troop  of  merchants  or  a  train  of  pilgrims.  When  owing  to  his  pro- 
tection, out  of  some  mere  md-gil,  or  resting-place  for  camels,  a  centre  of  trade  or 
industry  is  formed,  the  lordship  over  it  falls  naturally  to  him  and  his  connections.  In 
our  country,  also,  in  olden  times,  even  royal  burghs  found  shelter  under  the  shadow 
of  some  territorial  magnate  chosen  as  chief  magistrate  or  provost ;  but  it  is  fine  to 
mark  the  mere  personality  of  a  desert  chieftain  thus  serving  in  Arabia  as  a  nucleus, 
like  the  natural  eminence  with  its  castle  atop  in  Europe.  Inside  his  Avails  the 
Shekh  is  Al  Mu-ha-fidh,  the  Protector ;  at  most  Al  A-mir,  the  Orderer, — nearest 
approaches  to  kingly  title  which  primitive  Arab  usage  favours.  For  the  time  being 
his  striped  cloak  is  exchanged  for  the  furred  purple  ;  while  camel-driving  and  the 
organisation  of  caravans  yield  to  the  wider  aims  of  barbaric  statecraft.  But  no 
sooner  does  he,  or  rather  his  mare,  set  foot  in  the  open,  than  his  name  is  Muham- 
mad, and  all  his  town  manners  and  tinsel  drop  off  him.  The  name  just  mentioned 
may  suggest  to  many  a  case  in  point.  The  greatest  and  best  who  ever  bore  it  ^ — 
deliverer  of  untold  millions  from  polytheistic  faith  and  worship — was  born,  as  every 
one  knows,  a  Meccan  townsman  :  yet  was  he  none  the  less  what  his  Ku-raish 
lineage  made  him — a  son  and  freeman  of  the  desert.  A  posthumous  child,  and 
early  bereft  of  his  mother,  he  received,  like  Scott  at  Sandyknowe,  part  of  his 
nurture  among  herdsmen  and  shepherds ;  and  it  was  as  manager  of  the  business, 
and  conductor  of  the  trading  caravans,  of  his  future  wife,  the  well -endowed 
Meccan  widow  Kha-di-ja,  that  his  first  start  in  life  was  made. 

Not  even  with  all  this  does  the  explanation  of  Bedotnn  as  a  term  of  classi- 
fication exhaust  itself  The  Hio-hlander  of  lone  aeo  at  the  tail  of  a  herd 
of  black   cattle    took    care    not    to    be    mistaken    for  a    common   plebeian   drover. 


'  It  may  not  be  superfluous  to  inform  the  reader 
that  the  above  is  not  a  mere  Arab  estimate  of  Mu- 
hammad, but  is  confirmed  by  high  European  author- 
ities. As  noble  of  heart  as  of  Uneage,  as  abound- 
ing in  brotherly  love  as  in  moral  force,  all  that  was 
most  elevated  in  the  ancient  Arab  character  came  to 
perfection  in  him.  Of  the  censures  commonly  passed 
on  him,  some  are  shaken  when  the  Kur-an  is  studied ; 
and  others  count  for  httle  alongside  of  the  facts  of  his 
being  first  a  mere  mortal,  then  a  sixth-century  Arab. 
Take,  for  example,  his  legislation  regarding  maiTiage. 
Here  should  be  remembered  the  old-world  view,  no- 
where stronger  than  in  Semites,  of  the  obligation  to 
perpetuate  the  name  and  family.  From  Noah  to 
Muhammad,  no  patriarch  ever  dreamt  of  moral  evil 
in  promoting  as  many  expectant  maidens  as  circum- 
stances justified  to  be  mothers  of  men  ;  provided  that 
no  one's  domestic  peace  was  broken ;  no  wife  or  daugh- 


ter forced  (except  in  war)  from  her  own  people  ;  no 
woman  deserted  whose  hand  had  once  been  taken.  If 
the  Meccan  had  realised  the  "  bone  of  my  bone  and 
flesh  of  my  flesh  "  ideal,  if  he  had  dealt  with  the  idols 
of  the  harem  as  he  did  with  those  of  the  temple,  he 
would  have  been  other  than  an  Arab.  A  graver 
accusation  is  that  of  issuing  as  God's  revelations 
dogmas  and  precepts  of  his  own  shaping  and  re-shap- 
ing. But  as  to  this,  only  they  who  have  weighed  the 
facts  are  fair  judges.  With,  e.g.,  the  outbursts  of 
supposed  miraculous  voices  in  the  church  of  the  ex- 
cellent Edward  Irving  in  the  heart  of  busy  prosaic 
London  before  us,  extreme  allowance  is  necessary  for 
exaltations  of  feeling  and  attendant  visions  or  hallu- 
cinations—  only  too  apt  to  become  stereotyped  or 
habitual — in  one  who  at  the  mature  age  of  forty 
emerged  a  Prophet  from  the  mountain  solitudes  over 
against  Mecca,  like  Amos  from  the  deserts  of  Judah. 


i8  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  •  .BOOK  i. 

At  the  time  of  writing,  a  gipsy  "  king "  or  "  duke  "  or  "  earl,"  if  such  survives, 
Is  in  Httle  danger  of  being  confounded  with  the  pariahs  of  the  strolling  order. 
But  It  is  otherwise  with  the  subject  of  our  picture.  Of  all  uncertain  and 
Irregular  lines,  none  is  more  so  than  that  which  demarcates,  If  It  can  be 
said  to  do  so,  the  partly  localised  and  tributary  from  the  perfectly  nomadic 
and  unbridled  Arabs.  Postponing  race  questions,  and  speaking  only  of  char- 
acteristics, the  facts  are  In  this  wise  :  In  Arabia,  as  In  other  backward  coun- 
tries, the  merest  peasants  are  often  half  nomadic.  Only  the  unapproachable 
clans  of  the  interior  remain  untouched  by  the  hand  of  civilisation.  Over  all 
the  country  the  current  in  the  main  is  running  away  from  the  predatory  and 
towards  the  peaceful  life.  Further  on  we  shall  observe  great  communities 
actually  In  the  transition  stage  from  one  condition  to  the  other.  With  ethnic 
differences  even — how  much  more  habit — thus  ever  dissolving  and  disappearing. 
In  Arabia  as  all  the  world  over.  In  the  crucible  of  circumstances,  philosophic 
certainty  need  not  be  looked  for  In  any  delineation  of  Bedouin  nations.  But 
so  much  stated,  the  reader  will  not  be  drawn  Into  error  If  for  the  purposes  of 
this  book,  as  Act-makers  have  It,  the  term  Bedouin  be  declared  to  designate 
those  archaic  hordes  of  camel-pasturing  horsemen,  many  of  them  nations  In  all 
but  the  fluidity  and  variability  of  their  component  parts ;  haughty,  Independent, 
yet  the  reverse  of  barbarous ;  impatient  of  all  authority  or  organisation  outside 
the  tribal  group  or  confederation ;  whose  roof-tree  Is  the  tent-pole,  and  their 
reaping-hook  the  spear ;  whose  tent  cities  are 

"  Like  the  borealis  race, 
That  flit  ere  you  can  point  their  place ; "  ^ 

and  whose  multitudinous  chivalry,  though  now  as  little  heeded  as  if  in  another 
planet,  may  for  all  that  have  some  highly  interesting  part  in  Eastern  history  In 
store  for  it. 

Then  as  to  desert. 

The  picture  which  this  word  suggests  to  many  Is  that  of  troughs  of  ribbed 
sand,  devoid  alike  of  green  blade  and  of  animal  life  higher  In  the  scale  than  scor- 
pions. In  Arabia,  as  already  stated,  there  are  many  such.  But  generally  we  may 
be  safely  guided  here  by  the  etymological  sense  of  terra  deserta,  or  tract  without 
settled  population,  over  which  Nature's  "ancient  solitary  reign"  is  unmolested.  In 
Arabic  the  commoner  terms  are  bd-di-a,  from  the  same  root  as  Bedouin ;  bai-dd, 
from    a    different   root ;    Al  kha-ld,    the   void ;    sah-rd,    In    maps   written    Sahara ; 

^  Burns,  in  Tatii  o'  Shantcr.  .      ' 


CHAP.   II. 


DEFINITIONS. 


19 


fa-ldt ;  ha-vidd ;  and  to  name  no  more,  where  Turkish  and  Persian  words  prevail, 
chol. 

The  "Arabian  desert"  of  these  pages,  the  reader  will  please  to  understand,  is 
not  worse  off,  or  sterner,  than  the  average  American  prairie-land,  Australian  "  bush," 
or  Indian  jungle.  Acacias,  euphorbias,  cactuses,  myrrhs,^  tamarisks,  with  other 
shrubs  as  frugal  of  water  as  the  camels  whose  favourite  food  they  form,  soften 
even  its  hardest  parts.  In  good  years  and  at  the  proper  seasons,  vast  surfaces  of 
it,  owing  nothing  to  man  and  all  to  nature,  yield  luxuriant  pasture. 

Only  two  other  questions  of  nomenclature  remain.  How  far  extends  the 
"country  of  the  Arabian  horse"?  and  what  breed,  or  breeds,  of  horses  are  here 
included  in  the  name  Arabian  ? 

Beginning  with  the  topographical,  it  is  evident  that  the  two  terms  "  Arabia  " 
and  "  country  of  the  Arabian  horse "  are  no  more  synonymous,  in  the  sense  of 
coextensive,  than  "North  Britain"  and  the  country  of  the  Scots!  This  will  be 
illustrated  presently.  But  much  as  we  shall  try  to  keep  out  of  questions  of  mere 
delimitation,  not  only  as  hard  to  settle,  but  as  belonging  to  works  of  a  different 
order,  here  it  may  be  expected  of  us  to  consider  what  exactly  is  the  country  which 
the  name  Arabia  covers.  The  history  of  so  ancient  a  word  is  little  likely  ever 
to  be  got  at  through  etymology ;  we,  at  least,  have  no  rope  long  enough  for 
so  deep  a  well.^  After  all,  common  use  is  probably  a  better  guide  than  lexi- 
cography. Thus  far,  in  speaking  of  Arabia,  we  have  chiefly  had  in  view  what  is 
often  called  "Arabia  proper,"  or  "peninsular  Arabia" — south-eastern  prolongation 
to  the  Indian  Ocean,  between  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Gulf  of  Persia,  of  the  Syrian 
plateau.  But  this  has  merely  depended  on  the  space  thus  indicated  much  identify- 
ing itself  with  Najd,  the  soil  and  climate  of  which  are  so  interesting  to  us.  The 
time  has  come  to  intimate  that  the  narrower  definition  of  Arabia  is  by  no  means 
accepted  there.  Surface  configuration  does  not  conform  to  it ;  the  Arabs  do  not 
know  it ;  the  principal  modern  upholder  of  it  is  Palgrave,  whose  book  already 
quoted  contains  the  following:  "Arabia  and  Arabs  begin  south  of  Syria  and  Pales- 
tine; west  of  Bussorah  and  Zubair ;  east  of  Kerak  and  the  Red  Sea.  Draw  a 
line  across  from  the  top  of  the  Red  Sea  to  the  top  of  the  Persian  Gulf;  what  is 
below  that  line  is  alone  Arab  ;  and  even  then  do  not  reckon  the  pilgrim  route,  it 
is  half  Turkish ;  nor  Medina,  it  is  cosmopolitan ;  nor  the  sea-coast  of  Yemen,  it 
is  Indo- Abyssinian ;  least  of  all  Mecca,  .  .  .  where  every  trace  of  Arab  identity 
has    long    since    been    effaced  by  promiscuous    immorality  and    the   corruption   of 


1  In  Arabic,  murrj  q.  v.  in  Index  I. 

2  If  Lane's  suggestion  in  his  Arabic  dictionary  con- 
necting A'rab  (name  of  people  collectively)  with  any 
a  mixed  collection,  which  certainly  the  Arabs   have 


been  from  time  immemorial,  be  accepted  then  the 
names  Arabia  and  Abyssinia  have  the  same  etymo- 
logical meaning-. 


20 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  I. 


ages.  Muskat  and  Kateef  must  also  stand  with  Mokha  and  Aden  on  the  list  of 
exceptions" — (vol.  ii.  p.  163).  But  all  this  carries  with  it  its  own  contradiction. 
It  may  be  magnifiq^ie,  in  the  sense  of  sweeping;  but  it  is  not  geography:  on 
similar  grounds  London  might  be  put  outside  of  England !  We  spoke  just 
now  of  Arabs.  One  of  them,  Abu  '1  Fi-da,  the  very  great  fourteenth-century 
historian  and  geographer,  carried  Arabia  as  far  north  as  Aleppo.  If  we  do 
not  follow  him  here,  it  is  partly  because  Niebuhr's  conclusions  on  this  point 
are  taken  as  superseding  those  of  earlier  writers.  It  did  not  escape  this  prince 
of  scientific  travellers  that  the  ancients  had  imagined  a  line  like  that  drawn  by 
Palgrave ;  but  he  mentions  it  only  to  impute  it  to  their  ignorance.  After  doing 
so,  he  thus  continues  :  "  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  limits  assigned  to 
this  country  by  the  ancients,  a  much  wider  extent  must  at  any  rate  be  allowed 
to  present  Arabia.  In  consequence  of  the  conquests  and  settlements  of  the  Arabs 
in  Syria  and  Palestine,  the  deserts  of  these  countries  are  now  to  be  regarded  as 
part  of  Arabia ;  which  may  thus  be  considered  as  being  bounded  on  one  side 
by  the  river  Euphrates,  and  on  the  other  by  the  Isthmus  of  Suez."  ^  The  above 
description  is  read  as  comprehending  (i)  all  the  steppe-land  interposed  between 
Palestine  and  I'rak,  in  Arab  speech,  Shd-mt-ya,  in  European,  not  too  correctly, 
"Syrian  desert";  (2)  the  same  diffusing  itself  southward  adown  the  western  side 
of  the  lower  Euphrates,  both  above  and  below  its  junction  with  the  Tigris  at  Gurna, 
to  form  the  Shattu  '1  A'rab,  or  river  of  the  Arabs.  How  essentially  all  these 
lands  enter  into  Arabia,  not  only  because  inhabited  by  Arabs,  but  in  respect 
of  physical  aspects,  will  appear  hereafter.  Meanwhile  the  question  is.  What 
is  the  country  of  the  Arabian  horse  ?  The  spreading  character  of  the  Arab 
race  has  already  been  noticed.  Not  to  let  this  draw  on  digression ;  not  to 
refer  to  conquests,  notably  that  unparalleled  efflorescence  of  martial  vigour  which 
under  Muhammad  and  his  successors  carried  the  Meccan  standards  over  half  the 
world,^  we  confine  our  view  here  to  emigration.  And  this  from  the  earliest  ages 
has  come  to  Arabs  like  an  instinct.  Nobody  can  presume  to  say  when  or  how 
Arabia  became  their  country ;  but  in  the  first  dim  light  of  history  we  see  them 
issuing  out  of  it.  A  '  Saying '  ^  of  the  Prophet  directed  against  sea-going  is 
sometimes  quoted  ;  but  it  is  absolutely  unauthentic.     In  the  Kur-an,  passages  having 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  9,  vol.  ii.  p.  6. 

^  On  the  west,  we  know,  the  Arab  empire,  when 
most  extended  (middle  of  8th  Chr.  cent.),  touched  the 
Loire  ;  and  for  500  years  and  more  included  Spain. 
On  the  east,  it  crossed  the  Oxus,  beyond  which 
its  province  of  Mi-wa-ra  'n  na-har  reached  to  the 
Jaxartes. 

3  The  Muslim  view  of  the  Kur-an's  "  down-send- 


ing" {v.  p.  4,  ante,  in  f.n.  2)  is  incompatible  with  the 
idea  of  translating  its  smallest  word  into  another 
language  ;  while  owing  to  the  precautions  adopted 
after  Muhammad's  death  in  finally  making  a  book 
of  it  (v.  Kur-an  in  List  of  publications  consulted), 
even  European  criticism  finds  few  openings  for  im- 
pugning its  textual  authenticity,  and  Muslim  easily 
persuade  themselves  that   in   it   are  the   ipsissima 


CHAP.   II. 


DEFINITIONS. 


21 


the  opposite  tendency  meet  us — one  in  particular,^  which  in  thirteen  centuries  has 
encouraged  and  deHghted  milHons  upon  millions  of  mariners.  Circumstances  more 
than  books  and  sayings  doubtless  have  determined  it ;  but  at  all  events  the  supe- 
riority of  the  Arabs  as  navigators  over  most  other  Eastern  nations  is  established. 
Star-craft  seems  born  in  them.  Out  of  sight  of  paths  and  landmarks,  he  who  is 
not  the  veriest  townsman  will  shape  a  course  as  truly  as  if  his  nose  contained  a 
compass.  Add  to  this  a  spirit  of  enterprise  second  only  to  the  Anglo-Saxon 
— a  power  of  making  the  most  of  immutable  deserts,  not  less  than  of  fastening 
upon  trade-points  where  cities  can  be  founded  and  wealth  acquired  by  commerce 
— and  we  cease  to  wonder  at  colonies  of  Arabs  having  spread  east  and  west  from 
the  Senegal  to  the  Indus,  north  and  south  from  the  Euphrates  to  Madagascar. 
We  aspire  not  to  carry  the  reader  over  all  the  lands  into  which  the  Arab  and 
his  horse  have  passed.  Our  personal  acquaintance  with  the  Arabian  in  Africa 
is  as  slight  as  is  that  of  most  of  our  countrymen  with  the  Arabian  in  Arabia ; 
and,  that  apart,  the  subject  would  prove  too  wide.  On  the  other  hand,  too 
much  narrowing  of  the  surface  would  afford  an  imperfect  picture.  The  following 
are  among  the  facts  soon  to  appear.  If  all  the  Bedouin  nations  of  the  peninsula 
come  under  two  divisions — namely,  such  as  have  never  left  inner  Arabia  in  con- 
siderable bodies,  and  such  as  have  overflowed  into  adjacent  spaces — so  does  the 
emigrated  portion  separate  itself  into  those  who  still  have  one  foot  firm  in  Najd, 
going  to  it,  and  to  their  kindred  in  it,  for  wives  to  their  sons,  and  husbands  to  their 
daughters  ;  and  those  who  have  not  been  equally  careful  "  in  the  land  of  Canaanites  " 
to  keep  their  blood  and  manners  free  from  Syrian  or  Kurdi  admixture.  Of  all  the 
cities  washed  by  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  there  is  none,  however  non-Arab  its 
population,  from  whose  minarets  may  not  occasionally  be  made  out  on  the  far  hori- 
zon the  blackness  of  a  Bedouin  encampment,  having  its  winter  di-ras  towards  the 
interior  of  the  peninsula.  Lastly,  there  is  none  of  all  these  Bedouin  with  whom 
there  goes  not  the  Bedouin  mare.  Wherefore  necessarily  in  our  pages  are  counted 
to  the  country  of  the  Arabian   horse  all   localities  situated  in  western  Asia,  and 


verba  of  "  re\'elation."  When  in  these  pages  a 
'  Saying '  is  quoted,  perhaps  as  genuine  perhaps 
as  apocryphal,  the  reader  will  please  therefore  take 
the  reference  as  applying  not  to  a  Kuranic  text,  but 
to  one  of  the  handed-down  A-hd-dith  (pi.  of  ha-dith, 
q.  v..  Index  I.)  of  the  Prophet.  Barefaced  fabricators 
of  such  have  flourished.  After  much  sifting',  between 
seven  and  eight  thousand  '  Sayings '  are  now  alone  ad- 
mitted into  what,  for  want  of  better,  form  the  standard 
collections  of  "  orthodox  traditions."  But  very  many 
of  these  have  variants  ;  partly  through  the  inaccuracy 
natural  to  the  illiterate  of  two  hemispheres,  and  partly 
through  sectarian  and  polemic  garbling. 


^  He  it  is  Who  travel leth  you  by  land  and  scaj 
so  that  when  ye  are  in  ships  which  sail  aiuay  with 
them  [here  pronoun  changes  from  2d  to  3d  person] 
before  a  favouring  breeze,  and  they  rejoice  in  it,  there 
comes  upon  them  a  gale;  and  the  waves  beset  them 
fi-om  every  side ;  aiid  they  think  that  truly  they  are 
whebned  by  them : — they  call  on  God  as  true  be- 
lievers in  Him  only;  [saying] — Wouldst  Thou  but 
deliver  us  from  this,  then  surely  be  we  of  the  thanks- 
givers  :  and  when  He  hath  delivered  them,  then 
transgress  they  on  the  earth  with  what  is  outside  of 
Right. — Kur-an,  S.  x. 


22 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  I. 


tenanted  in  whole  or  part  by  Semites,  over  which  it  may  be  said  of  him,  when 
occurring,  that  he  is  at  least  among  his  own  people,  if  not  always  strictly  on  his 
native  soil.  Our  map  follows  this  view.  Many  good  maps  of  the  Arabian  pen- 
insula exist.^  The  portions  of  Arabia  falling  outside  the  peninsula  are  included 
in  even  better  ones.-  But  we  know  of  no  map — short  of  maps  of  Asia — uniting 
all  the  country  of  the  above  definition.  That  now  offered  is  compiled  from  those 
enumerated  below ;  not  without  the  addition  of  routes,  seats  of  tribes,  and  other 
particulars  derived  from  personal  observation  or  inquiries. 

Lastly,  what  is  an  Arabian  ?  Some  would  answer.  The  pure-bred  horse  of 
Najd  only  ;  but  this  leaves  us  in  a  difficulty.  Hard-and-fast  lines  are  not  to  be  laid 
down  in  Asia  as  in  Europe  ;  and  in  any  case,  to  hold  that  in  Arabia  only  horses  of 
the  higfhest  class  are  Arabs  would  be  like  narrowing  the  term  "English  horse" 
to  strains  in  the  stud-book.  True,  there  is  less  diversity  of  size  and  form 
among  Arabian  than  among  English  horses ;  but  this  depends  chiefly  on  the  phase 
of  civilisation  in  which  the  Arabs  still  are.  They  have  no  coaches  requiring 
grand  horses ;  or  cabs  in  which  to  show  off  steppers  of  the  "  own  brother  to 
Cauliflower"  stamp.  In  mere  travelling  they  ride  their  own  beasts,  without 
minding  what  they  are  like.  As  draught  is  still  rare  among  them,  their  strains 
are  free  from  the  cart-horse  blend  which  is  so  ineradicable  when  once  it  is  estab- 
lished. Not  as  yet  having  thought  of  turning  their  rivers  into  beer,  they  have 
none  of  those  enormous  dray-horses  which  excite  in  our  cities  the  admiration 
of  the  inhabitants  and  the  jealousy  of  foreigners.  All  their  goods  -  traffic,  as 
varied  in  character  as  it  is  considerable  in  extent,  passes  noiselessly  on  the 
backs  of  camels  and  horses,  mules  and  asses  :  the  last  in  all  the  greater 
request  owing  to  the  Bedouin  despising  them  too  much  to  "  lift "  them.  For 
the  simple  water-wheels  and  antediluvian  wooden  ploughs  of  the  cultivating 
classes,  when  horse-power  is  used,  and  not  mules  or  horned  cattle,  it  is  in  the 
form  of  nondescript  ponies,  coming,  like  the  loads  carried  by  them,  from  the 
four  points  of  the  compass,  and  called  in  Arabia  ku-chish  (pi.  of  ka-dish). 
Wanting  thus  the  spur  of  necessity,  not  less  than  the  needful  knowledge, 
the  Arabs,  as  a  whole,  cannot  claim  the  title  of  scientific  breeders  —  that  is, 
manufacturers    and    cultivators    ad   iiifinihim   of  artificial   varieties.      But   an    im- 


1  £■._§•.,  Walker's,  comijiled  1849,  for  E.I.  Company; 
•Palgrave's,  to  illustrate  his  journey  (1862-63);  and 
Mr  C.  M.   Doughty's,  in  op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  2. 

^  I.  Die  Euphrat-Tigris-Lander  oder  Armenian,  Kur- 
distan und  Mesopotamien  zu  C.  Ritter's  Erd-Kunde, 
Buch  iii.  West-Asien,  Theil  x.  und  xi.  Bearbeitet  von 
H.  Kiepert,  Herausgegeben  von  C,  Ritter.  Berlin, 
1854,  Verlag  von  Dietrich  Reimer. 


II.  Carte  Gendrale  de  I'Empire  Ottoman  en  Europe 
et  en  Asie,  dressee  par  Henri  Kiepert.  James 
Wyld,  Geographer  to  the  Queen,  457  Strand,  W.C. 
1867. 

III.  Nouvelle  Carte  Gendrale  des  Provinces  Asia- 
tiques  de  I'Empire  Ottoman  (sans  I'Arabie),  dressde 
par  Henri  Kiepert  Berlin,  1883.  Berlin,  Dietrich 
Reimer,  Editeur,  1884.; 


CHAP.  II.  DEFINITIONS.  23 

portant  factor  here  is  the  size  and  diversity  of  their  country.  Not  merely  the 
Arab  peninsula —  1 300  miles  long,  from  the  head  of  the  Gulf  of  A'kaba  to  the 
Straits  of  Babu  '1  Man-dab,  by  from  900  to  1500 — comes  into  the  prospect. 
To  that  has  to  be  added  not  only  all  the  undemarcated  northern  deserts 
which  Niebuhr  gives  to  Arabia ;  but  further,  the  several  conterminous  lands 
included  in  our  map,  over  which,  in  town  and  country,  nomads  mix  with 
settlers.  Over  so  great  an  area,  necessarily,  though  there  are  no  Shetland 
or  Orkney  Islands  producing  shaggy  and  stunted  ponies  almost  as  naturally 
as  the  mountain  -  grasses,  there  occur  differences  of  soil  and  climate  distinct 
enough  to  stamp  themselves  on  all  animals.  Over  the  same  surface,  it  is 
absolutely  certain,  crossing  has  had,  or  has  still,  a  more  or  less  free  hand 
given  to  it.  All  who  are  what  is  called  in  India  "Arab-mad"  —  that  is,  such 
fanatical  believers  in  Arabs  as  to  consider  pure  breeding,  with  every  other 
attribute  of  perfection,  implanted  in  them  from  the  time  of  Noah — may  start 
at  this.  But  in  all  the  world  there  is  no  more  proper  subject  for  wholesome 
scepticism  than  Arab  genealogy,  both  of  men  and  horses.  This  will  appear  as  we 
proceed.  Meanwhile,  only  this  point  is  being  made  for,  that,  considering  how  many 
Arab  tribes  will  breed  from  any  horse  or  mare  available ;  also,  the  diversity  of 
character  and  conformation  which  is  produced  in  horses  by  the  varying  degrees 
of  "  breeding "  present  in  them,  by  the  physical  aspects  of  their  native  districts, 
and  by  what  has  been  done  with  them  in  colthood,  our  labours  would  be  futile 
were  we  to  occupy  ourselves  exclusively  with  ideal  animals.  In  the  sequel  it 
will  be  brought  out  most  fully  that  the  Central  Arabian  highlands  possess  the 
highest  title  to  rank  as  nursing-mother  of  the  far-famed  steed  of  Araby.  That 
fact  will  never  be  lost  sight  of.  The  typical  horse  of  Najd,  it  will  be  seen, 
has  a  separate  chapter  given  to  him.  They  who  accept  him,  and  him  only,  as 
an  Arabian,  are  at  liberty  to  do  so.  But  for  the  subject  of  this  book  are  taken 
the  horses  bred  by  Arabs  all  over  the  territory  which  our  map  exhibits. 

Pursuing  the  plan  laid  out  at  starting,  several  chapters  must  now  be  devoted 
to  the  country  of  the  Arabian  horse.  First,  the  peninsula  of  the  Arabs  will  be 
looked  at.  A  brief  account  will  next  be  given  of  how  and  when  so  many  of 
its  nomadic  inhabitants  have  left  it.  Followinsf  in  the  track  of  the  two  greatest 
hordes  which  in  modern  times  have  done  so,  we  shall  then  carry  the  patient  reader 
into  the  so-called  "  Syrian  desert,"  or  Shd-mt-ya,  which  is  now  appropriated  by 
the  Ae-ni-za  :  and  thence,  across  the  Euphrates,  into  the  pastures  of  the  Sham-mar. 
Lastly,  with  the  face  still  Persia-wards,  we  shall  find  ourselves,  now  on  this  side 
the  Tigris,  now  on  that,  in  I'rak — capitals  Baghdad  and  Bussorah — least  Arabian 
of  all  these  countries,  but  still  running  over  with  Arab  men  and  Arab  horses.  To 
many  Avho  have  booked  themselves  with  us,  the  above  may  suggest  heavy  going 


24  COUNTRY  OF  THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

for  the  next  few  stages.  It  may  be  so ;  but  by  "  springing  the  team "  over  the 
driest  bits,  perhaps  even  sometimes  pulling  up  before  a  picturesque  prospect,  we 
shall  do  our  best  for  all  who  go  on  with  us.  The  original  route,  it  may  be  men- 
tioned, was  a  shorter  one.  No  separate  stages  were  thought  of  for  excursions 
through  Arabian  countries.  To  drop  the  figure,  we  tried  during  more  than  a 
year  so  to  arrange  our  materials  as  that  the  Arabian  horse  should  form  not  our 
central  subject  only,  but  our  single  one.  The  consequence  was,  that  on  the  first 
appearance  of  terms  such  as  Najdi  horse,  or  as  some  would  write  it  Nedgdi  horse, 
Ae-ni-za  horse,  and  I'-ra-kl  horse,  long  digressions  into  geography  and  tribal 
history  proved  necessary.  To  obviate  this,  and  for  other  reasons,  the  lines  which 
are  being  followed  seemed  the  proper  ones.  And  thus  it  happens  that  not  the 
Arabian  horse  alone,  but  with  him  large  portions  of  country,  as  well  as  numerous 
peoples,  are  appearing  in  these  pages. 


CHAPTER     III. 


PENINSULAR    ARABIA. 


GREATLY  as  geographical  knowledge  has  been  advanced  by  Arabs,  both  in 
the  fields  of  travel  and  book-making,  the  boundaries  and  delineations  current 
among  the  inhabitants  of  the  peninsula  are  as  indeterminate  as  they  are  fluctuating. 
For  "  imaginary  lines,"  as  for  "  ethnic  frontiers,"  we  are  Indebted  to  Europeans, 
from  the  Greeks  and  Romans  downward.  By  way  of  surface  divisions,  land  and 
water,  plain  and  mountain,  main  portion  and  "  flanks,"  content  the  natives;  "our 
limits  and  other  peoples'  limits  "  make  up  their  political  geography/.  Our  purpose 
of  shunning  details  of  boundary  has  been  stated.  We  are,  however,  occupied  with 
a  race  of  horses  partaking  in  some  slight  degree  of  the  character  of  a  fauna.  It  has 
been  seen  how  largely  the  moulding  of  that  breed,  equally  with  its  diffusion,  follows 
physical  conditions.  The  further  influence  which  foreign  wars,  internal  disorders, 
and  political  changes  have  had  on  It  will  also  continually  display  itself.  Therefore, 
If,  In  place  of  topics  of  delimitation,  slight  glances  at  past  and  present  passages  of 
Arab  history  are  here  indulged  in,  we  trust  to  the  forbearance  of  the  reader.  First 
of  all,  vast  spaces  of  the  peninsula  may  be  separated  as  entering  but  slightly  into 
the  country  of  the  Arabian  horse.  To  begin  with,  there  Is  the  triangle  between  the 
Gulfs  of  Suez  and  A'kaba — the  "  Sinaltic  peninsula"  of  geographers.  However 
interesting  In  connection  with  the  question  of  whether  Sinai,  the  Olympus,  as  it  has 
been  called,  of  the  Hebrew  peoples,  be  identifiable  with  this  summit,  or  the  other, 
of  its  mountain-masses — collectively  Ja-bal  Tur  of  Arabs — a  region  pasturing  only 
sheep  and  goats,  does  not  allure  us.  Similarly  may  be  eliminated  the  great  block 
of  desert  —  covering,  as  Is  computed,  about  50,000  square  miles  —  between,  on 
the  north,  the  medial  plateau  of  the  peninsula ;  and,  on  the  south,  Yemen,  Hadh- 
ra-maut,  and  Oman.  In  books  this  is  called  Ar  Rub-n  7  khd-li,  or  The  Empty 
Quarter.  The  Dah-nd,  or  Red,  from  the  orange  colour  of  its  drifting  and 
treacherous  sands,  is  a  more  common  name  for  it.     As  will  appear  presently,  the 

D 


26 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


Chinese  designation  of  Dry  Sea  would  well  describe  it.  This  is  said  never  to 
have  been  traversed  in  its  full  width,  even  by  Bedouin.  Hunger  and  thirst,  with 
the  extreme  of  tropical  heat,  keep  guard  over  it.  The  wild  ass  knows  it ;  and  its 
skirts  are  full  of  sun-scorched  ostrich-hunters  ;  but  human  settlements  are  impos- 
sible where  a  track  is  no  sooner  made  than  obliterated,  and  where  an  accident  to 
the  water-skins  may  mean  a  lingering  death.  Not  towards  the  Indian  Ocean 
and  the  Gulf  of  Oman  only,  but  on  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Gulf  of  Persia  lit- 
torals also,  a  varying  breadth  or  belt  of  coast  and  mountain  may  also  be  excluded. 
Australians  tell  us,  that  the  worst  horse  in  all  their  country  is  that  bred  in  tropical 
Queensland  near  the  sea  ;  and  that  throughout  both  Victoria  and  New  South  Wales, 
maritime  districts  will  not  produce  horses  equal  in  working  power  or  stamina  to 
those  of  the  interior.  To  realise  how  in  Arabia  also  this  is  so,  it  needs  but  to 
enter  the  peninsula  where  so  many  of  us  obtain  our  first  and  only  glimpse  of  it,  at 
Aden  ;  then  pass  northward,  cross  the  desert  from  west  to  east  in  the  latitude  of 
Suez  ;  and,  holding  south  again,  observe  what  meets  us.  Aden,  the  reader  may 
need  reminding,  is  the  port  of  Yemen  ;  as  Yemen  is  the  "  Sheba "  or  SabEean 
kingdom  of  the  ancients.  Palgrave  quotes  an  old  tradition  that  the  Arabian 
breed  of  horses  originated  in  Yemen. ^  But  probably  he  did  not  know  that 
Yemen,  and  its  mistranslation  "Arabia  Felix,"  ^  included  down  to  at  least 
Ptolemy's  time  (prob.  loo  to  150  a.d.)  all  Arabia,  except  the  peninsula  of 
Sinai  {Arabia  PetrcBa)^  and  Sha-mi-ya  or  Arabia  Deserta.  Rejecting  as  obsolete 
this  application  of  the  name  Yemen,  we  shall,  here  and  henceforth,  use  it  as  did 
the  very  early  Arabian  poets,  and  afterwards  the  Muslim  geographers.  That  is, 
we  shall  restrict  it  to  the  south-western  province  of  the  peninsula,  as  demarcated 
not  alone  from  Al  Hi-jaz  and  Najd,  but  also  from  its  own  proper  extension  along 
the  sea-coast,  from  Aden  to  Cape  Rasu  '1  Hadd.*  And  that  Yemen  thus  defined 
never  was,  and  never  can  be,  a  natural  horse-land  is  written  on  the  face  of  it,  as 
well  as  in  numerous  records.  The  sweltering  heat  of  its  littoral  strip — -Ti-ha-ma 
— is  like  that  of  Bengal  when  the  monsoon  is  gathering.  Inland,  cooler  breezes 
blow  ;  mountain-ranges,  some  of  them  of  a  fine  elevation,  mix  with  fertile  valleys. 
But  such  afford  no  space  to  nomads  ;  and  their  teeming  industrious  inhabitants 
have  other  pursuits  than  horse-breeding.  Burckhardt  says  of  Yemen,  that  both 
its  climate  and  pasture  are  injurious  to  horses ;  that  they  never  thrive  in  it,  and 
even  die  in  numbers  from  disease  ;  as  do,  he  might  have  added,  English,  and  even 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  19,  vol.  ii.  p.  241. 

2  V.  in  Index  I.,  art.  Yemen. 

5  "  Arabia   Petrsea "    did   not   mean   originally,   as 
supposed  by  Palgrave,  "  Stony  Arabia"  {Ency.  Brit., 


vol.  ii.  pp.  236  et  239),  but  the  Arabia  of  which  the 
capital  was  Petra — i.e.,  the  Nabatfean  country. 
*  I.e.,  coast  strip  of  Hadh-ra-maut. 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR  ARABIA. 


27 


Arabian,  horses  in  Lower  Bengal.  When  he  visited  it,  he  found  it  drawing  on 
Najd  for  horses  ;  also  by  way  of  Sa-wa-kin,  on  the  countries  watered  by  the  Nile.^ 
This  observation  may  safely  be  thrown  much  further  back.  Not  mere  probability, 
but  good  evidence,  shows  the  importation  of  horses  into  Yemen  to  have  begun 
tolerably  early.  "  Antiquity  "  is  one  of  the  vaguest  of  terms  :  the  ages  denoted 
by  it  may  either  be  immeasurably  distant  or  comparatively  near  us.  To  a  con- 
siderable extent,  the  facts  of  Arabian  geography  cited  above  on  the  Wild  horse 
question  prevent  Eq-ims  cabalhis  from  being  reckoned  among  the  earliest  posses- 
sions of  the  Arabs.  In  the  records  of  the  Assyrian  kings  who  took  tribute  from 
Arabia,  camels  and  asses  are  mentioned,  but  not  horses.  Strabo,  referring  to  the 
time  of  Augustus,  observes  that  there  were  neither  horses  nor  mules  in  Yemen.^ 
The  great  Greek  geographer,  so  far  as  appears,  never  was  nearer  Yemen  than 
Egypt.  No  doubt  he  had  excellent  information  ;  but  his  statement  on  this  point 
is  surprising.  At  the  period  in  question,  Yemen  formed  the  seat  of  a  far-spread 
Arab  empire ;  the  "  Sa-ba,"  or  "  Kingdom  of  the  Himyarites  and  Sabaeans," 
of  whose  wealth  and  trading  importance,  from  the  days  of  Solomon  to  those 
of  Cyrus,  we  obtain  glimpses  in  the  Biblical  books ;  ^  and  in  numerous  inscrip- 
tions both  Assyrian  and  South  Arabian.  In  works  like  Pocock's  "* — at  the  time 
marvels  of  research,  but  now  out  of  date — more  than  forty-nine  successions  of 
native  Yemenite  sovereigns  are  given ;  a  queen  whose  name  was  Bil-kis  coming 
twenty-second  on  the  roll.  Arabian  lore  identifies  Bil-kts  with  the  Queen  of 
Sa-ba  who,  according  to  traditions  noticed  slightly  in  i  Kings  x.  i,  13,  and  more 
copiously  in  the  Kur-an,^  visited  Solomon  ;  but  the  identification  has  so  far  not 
been  verified.  Solomon's  ships  plied  on  the  Red  Sea ;  and  his  trading  caravans 
opened  up  new  land-routes.  He  built  "cities  for  his  chariots,"  and  "cities  for 
his  horsemen"  (2  Chron.  viii.  6).  At  that  rate,  ancient  Jerusalem  must  have  been 
full  of  horse-dealers.  If  even  the  officers  of  the  royal  household,  when  they 
entertained  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  failed  to  seize  so  magnificent  an  opportunity  of 
exchanging  their  used-up  horses  for  gold  of  Ophir,  it  was  contrary  to  all  modern 
practice.  Strabo's  statement  may  only  mean  that  horses  and  mules  were  not  to 
be  seen  every  day,  and  everywhere,  in  Yemen  at  the  time  alluded  to.  But  the 
point  is  of  small  importance.  If  down  to  B.C.  50  no  Tobba',*^  or  sovereign,  of 
Yemen  received  horses  as  presents,  or  imported  them,  the  several  Roman  invasions 
of  Arabia  in  the  reigns  of  Augustus,  Trajan,  and  Severus  must  have  left  foreign 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  15,  vol.  ii.  p.  54. 

2  Bk.  xvi.  p.  768. 

^  Jer.  vi.  20 ;  Ezek.  xxvii.,  passim j  Isa.  1.x.  6 ;  Job 
vi.  19. 

*  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  8. 


^  SCi-ra  xxvii. 

"  Tobba' — the  most  approved  rendering  of  which  is 
powerful — formed  the  distinctive  hereditary'  title  of 
the  Sabcean  emperors,  as  Pharaoh  formed  that  of 
their  Egyptian  neighbours. 


28 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  I. 


horses  behind  them,  as  our  expedition  against  Theodorus  did  in  Abyssinia.^  Later 
{c.  356  A.D.),  two  hundred  well-bred  Cappadocian  horses  were  among  the  presents 
carried  by  the  embassy  which  the  Emperor  Constantius  sent  to  Yemen,  to  incHne 
the  Homeritse  towards  Christianity.-  Even  the  elephant,  so  much  more  like 
transporting  others  than  being  himself  transported,  was  carried  from  Africa  into 
Yemen.  No  one  knows  when  the  Sabsean  kingdom  began.  But  it  lasted  down 
to  our  sixth  century;  when  the  Himyarite  king  Dhu  Nu'-as  (Dhu  Nu-was  of  the 
Arab  chroniclers)  was  defeated,  and  Yemen  subjugated  by  the  Ethiopians.  All 
the  Arabic  stories  about  the  Abyssinians  speak  of  their  elephants  ;  which  evidently 
were  a  novelty,  and  greatly  impressed  the  Arabs.^  When  Ab-ra-ha,  the  second 
Abyssinian  king  of  Yemen,  marched  from  his  capital,  San-a',  to  pillage  Mecca, 
he  rode  an  elephant ;  but  fortune  did  not  attend  him.  The  day  he  halted  before 
the  far-famed  temple  town,  his  army  suffered  a  disaster,  which  prepared  the  way 
for  the  Persian  conquest  of  Yemen  {c.  570  a.d.)  The  year  which  witnessed 
Ab-ra-ha's  destruction  was  that  of  Muhammad's  birth.  The  Kur-an  alludes,  in  its 
oracular  style,  to  the  occurrence.  Allah  is  represented  as  siding  with  the  heathen 
Meccans  against  the  Abyssinian  Christians ;  and  sending  birds  to  hail  down  stones 
on  the  "  People  of  the  Elephant,"  so  thai  they  became  as  corn  eaten  up  all  but  the 
stalks.^ 

Marching  with  Yemen  on  the  north,  the  "barrier  land"  of  Al  Hi-jaz  com- 
pletes the  Red  Sea  coast  of  Arabia.  Here,  and  in  western  Najd,  Is-lam  and  the 
Arab  empire  began.  Here  are  its  two  sacred  cities — Mecca,  where  persecution  first 
gave  point  to  Muhammad's  mission ;  Medina,  where  he  died  and  -was  buried. 
But  not  to  let  this  detain  us,  it  has  been  seen  how  far  from  fertile  Arabia  is ; 
and  sterile,  even  in  the  midst  of  sterility,  is  Al  Hi-jaz.     To  rear  horses  in  it  costs 


1  Mostly  as  gifts.  But  sometimes  a  charger  which 
had  broken  loose  would  elect  for  an  Abyssinian  career. 
Thus  a  distinguished  staff-officer  landing  in  Annesley 
Bay  with  a  couple  of  English  chargers  and  a  groom 
who  didn't  know  how  to  picket  them,  found  himself, 
the  first  or  second  morning,  with  nothing  but  the 
groom  !  Ultimately  one  was  brought  back  ;  but  the 
other  remained. 

^  This  fact  has  come  down  in  an  epitome  by 
Photius  (853  A.D.)  of  Constantinople,  of  a  fifth-cen- 
tury work,  no  longer  extant,  by  Philostorgius,  v.  The 
Syrian  Church  in  India,  by  G.  M.  Rae,  1892,  p.  97 
et  seq.  The  religion  of  the  Sabseans  is  obscure.  As 
tracing  their  descent  from  Abraham  and  Keturah,  they 
practised  circumcision  ;  and  many  of  their  cult  terms 
are  common  Semitic  words.  The  worship  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  had  a  great  place  among  them.  The 
old  confusion  of  the  people  of  Sa-ba,  or  Sheba,  with 


the  sect,  or  sects,  of  the  Sd-bi-!i-7!a,  is  now  dispelled. 
The  two  names  are  not  written  with  the  same  S. 

^  Nations  which  do  not  see  to  it  may  go  back, 
instead  of  forward,  in  civilisation,  religion,  arts,  and 
manners.  The  modern  Abyssinians  shoot  down  their 
wild  elephants  ;  but  they  have  lost  the  power  of 
taming  them.  The  spectacle  of  Sir  R.  Napier's 
Indian  elephants  working  harder  than  jiaid  labourers 
filled  them  with  mute  astonishment.  An  elephant 
picketed  near  a  village  would  atti'act  all  the  inhabi- 
tants. When  the  beast  trumpeted,  the  crowd  would 
flee  as  if  the  last  trump  had  sounded. 

■•  Kur-an,  S.  cv.  One  of  the  traditional  Arabic  ac- 
counts of  Ab-ra-ha's  expedition,  the  preservation  of 
which  we  owe  to  the  historian  Ta-ba-ri,  of  Baghdad, 
speaks  of  an  outbre.ak  of  smallpox  in  his  army  ;  but 
this  explanation  of  the  bird  miracle  is  caviare  to  all 
true  believers  and  sticklers  for  literal  interpretations. 


CHAP.  III.  PENINSULAR   ARABIA.  29 

too   much   money ;    and  they  can  be  but  little  used  on  expeditions,  owing  to  the 
scarcity  of  water  above  ground,  and  the  wells  being  so  often  dry. 

"The  settled  inhabitants  of  Hi-jaz  and  Yemen,"  says  Burckhardt,  "are  not  much  in  the 
habit  of  keeping  horses  ;  and  I  believe  it  may  be  stated  as  a  moderate  and  fair  calculation 
that  between  five  and  six  thousand  constitute  the  greatest  number  of  horses  in  the  country, 
from  A'kabah,  or  the  north  point  of  the  Red  Sea,  southwards  to  the  shores  of  the  ocean 
near  Hadh-ra-maut." 

And  again — 

"The  Bedouins  of  Hi-jaz  have  but  few  horses,  their  main  strength  consisting  in  camel- 
riders  and  foot-soldiers.  In  all  the  country  from  Mecca  to  Medina,  between  the  mountains 
and  the  sea,  a  distance  of  at  least  260  miles,  I  do  not  believe  that  200  horses  could  be  found  ; 
and  the  same  proportion  of  numbers  may  be  remarked  all  along  the  Red  Sea  from  Yam-bu' 
up  to  A'kabah." 

Observations  as  to  numbers  made  in  Burckhardt's  day,  if  revised  in  ours, 
would  probably  give  lower,  not  higher,  figures.  The  studs  of  the  great  are  outside 
the  question.  These  merely  indicate  their  owners'  wealth  and  power,  and  the 
energy  used  in  getting  them  together.  At  mid-winter  in  Cabul,  when  outside 
it  was  like  Siberia,  we  raised  vegetables  in  a  warm  corner  of  our  hut ;  and 
so  may  horses  be  bred  in  Al  Hi-jaz.  Thus,  we  are  told  by  Burckhardt  of  the 
Sha-rif  of  Mecca,  that  he  "  possessed  an  excellent  stud  "  ;  that  "  the  best  stallions 
of  Najd  were  taken  to  Mecca  for  sale  "  ;  and  that  "  it  became  a  fashion  among  the 
Bedouin  women  going  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Mecca  that  they  should  bring  their 
husbands'  stallions  as  presents  to  the  Sha-rif;  for  which,  however,  they  received 
silk  stuffs,  ear-rings,  and  similar  articles."^ 

Crossing  now  the  stony  desert  which  trends  from  the  top  of  the  Red  Sea 
to  the  Persian  Gulf,  we  come  to  the  oasis  of  Al  Ha-sa.  Some  so  miles  lono-, 
by  about  15  at  its  broadest,  this  occupies  almost  the  whole  region  skirting  the 
upper  half  of  the  Gulf.  Its  settled  inhabitants  have  been  guessed  at  150,000;  all 
busily  engaged  in  trade  and  cultivation.  But  hordes  of  nomads  revolve  round 
it;  and  the  ga-sd-ib,  or  long  plaited  locks,^  of  the  Uj-man,  Mur-ra,  Ba-ni  Kha-lid, 
and  other  divisions  of  the  Bedouin,  everywhere  appear  in  it.  The  climate  is 
more  Indian  than  Arabian.  To  one  entering  it  from  the  desert,  the  shade  of 
its  date-gardens,  the  coolness  of  its  rice  and  corn  fields,  and  the  sound  of  its 
waters  bubbling  up  from  springs,  and  careering  through  green  places,  seem  too 
delightful  to  be  real.  Caesar,  and  others  after  him,  have  it  that  the  natives 
of  coast  districts   exhibit  in   their  manners  the  liberalising  effects  of  commercial 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  15,  vol.  ii.  p.  56.  I     the  Ae-ni-za  and  Sham-mar,  ja-dd-il~i.e.,  twists  or 

^  Called  also  ku-rini,  or  gu-rihi,  lit.  horns;  and  by     I     braids. 


3° 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


[book  I. 


intercourse.  In  certain  of  their  aspects  the  inhabitants  of  Al  Ha-sa  exempHfy 
this ;  or  perhaps  they  are  not  Arabs,  in  the  sense  that  the  tribes  of  the  interior 
are  Arabs.  At  all  events,  Aryan  leaven  from  across  the  Gulf  of  Persia  has 
often  stirred  them.  In  the  third  century  a.h.,  when  Carmathian  rationalism 
was  waging  war  on  Allah-worship,  the  forces  which  shook  the  Arab  empire 
gathered  in  Al  Ha-sa.^  Nearer  our  time,  when  the  Wahabite  theocracy  radiated 
outward  from  the  centres  of  Bedouin  life  in  Najd,  the  merchant  princes  and 
oases- planters  of  the  eastern  coast-land,  though  compelled  to  accept  it,  never 
loved  it.  This  Wahabyism  will  often  again  be  mentioned.'-^  In  our  day,  as 
most  readers  know,  not  only  the  Wahabite  kingdom,  but  the  fervid  theological 
development  which  inflated  it,  are  in  a  state  of  subsidence.  Al  Ha-sa 
now  forms  as  completely  an  Ottoman  province  as  Al  Hi-jaz  and  Yemen — 
more  so  indeed  than  the  latter,  in  which  is  the  British  settlement  of  Aden.  A 
Turkish  garrison  is  posted  in  its  chief  town,  Huf-huf;  the  Turkish  flag  flies, 
or  droops,  over  the  old  Carmathian  fortresses.  Constantinople-coloured  Islamism 
suits  the  temper  of  its  people  better  than  sectarian  rigorism.  Articles  of  taxation, 
not  articles  of  religion,  occupy  the  thoughts  of  the  Osmanli.  Embargoes  on 
silk  and  other  luxuries  as  unbefitting  a  "true  believer"  have  gone  out  with 
Wahabyism  :  the  products  and  manufactures  of  China,  India,  and  Persia  now 
freely  enter  the  province  through  many  a  harbour.  No  longer  dragged  off 
to  holy  wars  or  crusades  against  "infidels,"  its  inhabitants  are  prospering.     The 


^  The  reactionary  movement  of  the  Carmathians  or 
Ka-rA-mi-ta  \v.  Index  I.]  is  distinguished  sharply  from 
protests  like  those  of  the  Kha-wd-rij  \v.  Index  I.]  and 
Wa-ha-bis.  The  two  last  named  were  directed  at 
the  straightening.,  or  reform,  of  Islamism.  The  Car- 
mathians rather  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  the 
Najdian  Shekh  nicknamed  Mu-sai-li-ma  \v.  Index  I.], 
who  in  the  Prophet's  lifetime  headed  a  revolt  on  the 
lines  of  paganism.  Their  first  appearance  was  in 
Babylonia.  Welded  together  by  a  Knight  Templar- 
hke  discipline  and  organisation,  during  two  centuries 
they  maintained  their  tenets  of  perfect  freedom  from 
every  code  of  morals  or  theology.  It  is  a  matter  of 
history  how,  under  their  warlike  leaders,  they  wrested 
large  portions  of  I'rak,  Syria,  and  Arabia  from  the 
Caliphs  :  how  at  the  pilgrimage  season  of  930  a.d. 
a  Carmathian  horde  under  Abu  Ti-hir  sacked  Mecca  ; 
carried  off  the  "black  stone"  (ransomed  22  years 
later) ;  and  perpetrated  deeds  worthy  of  Hulagu  and 
his  Tatars  {v.  Gibbon's  fifty-second  chapter).  The 
fruitful  parent,  Ismailism,  of  the  Carmathian  move- 
ment is  known  to  moderns  through  another  of  its 
progeny,  the  Druses.  Offshoots  of  the  same  stem  are 
the  Assassins  ;  said  still   to   exist   in    Lebanon,  and 


certainly  flourishing  in  Persia. 

2  Most  have  read  how  in  the  beginning  of  our 
century  Turkey,  or  rather  Egypt,  was  forced  to 
send  expeditions  into  middle  Arabia  to  curb  the 
Wahabis  ;  how  from  1819-49,  Egyptian  Pashas  main- 
tained a  grip  of  the  Najdian  table-land ;  how  in 
the  latter  year  Najd  rose  on  the  foreign  garrisons, 
and  restored  the  Wahabite  empire.  The  second 
break-up  of  the  revived  sectarian  sovereignty  is  also 
a  matter  of  history.  In  due  time  {c.  1871)  its  fall  was 
followed  by  the  occupation  of  its  seaboard  province 
of  Al  Ha-sa  by  a  small  force  from  Baghdad.  The 
Turkish  commander  then  proclaimed  himself  "con- 
queror of  Najd";  and  his  master  the  Sultin  sent 
him  a  sword  of  honour,  with  "Najd"  studded  in 
diamonds  on  the  scabbard.  This  is  all  very  well ; 
so  long  as  it  does  not  produce  the  impression  that 
Al  Ha-si  is  part  of  Najd  ;  or  that  governors  are  now 
sent  from  Constantinople  into  Central  Arabia  proper. 
Notwithstanding  very  great  changes,  Najd  still  forms 
what  it  did  when  the  first  glimmer  of  tradition  falls 
on  it,  the  heart  of  Arabian  nationality  and  autonomy 
— the  most  Arab  portion  of  Arabia. 


CHAP.  III.  PENINSULAR  ARABIA.  31 

sister  arts  of  agriculture  and  horse-breeding  flourish  round  their  hamlets.  Speaking 
of  this  suggests  that  here  may  be  a  convenient  place  to  notice  two  of  the  many 
descriptives  under  which  Arab  horses  pass  in  India — "  Gulf  Arabs,"  and  "  Najdi 
Arabs."  The  former  name  is  often  given  loosely  to  such  as  are  not  good- 
looking,  when  the  "coarseness"  is  unredeemed  by  racing  form;  the  latter,  to 
"little  pictures,"  of  a  stamp  which  every  self-constituted  judge  carries  with  him 
in  his  eye,  though  he  scarcely  could  describe  it.  As  for  the  coarse  ones, 
directly  we  get  outside  of  the  peninsula  we  shall  see  many  localities  which 
produce  them:  here  it  merely  is  the  counting  of  them  to  "the  Gulf"  that  calls 
for  a  remark.  If  by  "  Gulf"  the  Persian  side  of  it  be  intended,  then,  whatever 
share  of  Arab  blood  belongs  to  them  should  not  save  them  from  the  name  of 
Persians,  if  it  be  Persian  breeding,  or  want  of  breeding,  that  has  shaped  them. 
Speaking,  however,  of  the  Arabian  border,  that  is  Al  Ha-sa,  not  only  are  big  and 
vulgar  ones  unfrequent  there,  but  if  a  type  exist  at  all  for  the  miscalled  "  Najdi "  of 
the  Indian  market,  the  Ha-sa  bred  one,  we  rather  think,  supplies  it.  Not  that  in 
Al  Ha-sa  there  is  only  one  type.  Bad-u  land,  as  just  seen,  has  this  oasis  for  its 
horse-market.  Well -grown  colts,  or,  oftener,  aged  stallions,  of  the  best  desert 
strains,  are  brought  into  it,  and  sold,  by  Bad-us  ;  while  others  are  bought  by  towns- 
men from  passing  foray  parties.  Yet  withal,  innumerable  "  wretches "  grow  up 
under  its  palm-trees.  Blood  and  "  manners  "  may  seldom  be  wanting.  It  is  easier 
to  find  a  blood  one  in  Al  Ha-sa  than  the  opposite.  The  "  sweetly  pretty,"  if 
sometimes  characterless,  head  is  present ;  also  a  glossy  coat  :  the  former  Najdian  ; 
the  latter  due  to  the  warmth  all  the  year  round  of  the  Ha-sa  climate.  But  these 
things  no  more  make  a  horse  than  French  gloves  and  shiny  boots  do  a  man. 
Herding  from  foalhood  with  cows  and  buffaloes  develops  neither  bone  nor  barrel. 
Crops  oi  jat  or  lucerne  are  excellent  things  in  their  way  ;  but  they  belong  to  the 
stall-feeding  system.  For  want  of  having  had  the  temper  chastened  with  work  in 
colthood,  the  village-bred  horse  of  Al  Ha-sa  generally  is  of  the  tear-away  division, — ■ 
the  kind  that  at  the  starting-post  take  two  grooms  to  hold  them  ;  the  moment  the 
flags  are  down,  if  not  before  it,  shoot  out  like  northern  streamers ;  coming  up  the 
distance,  look  like  half-drowned  cats.  Remount  officers  should  not  go  to  Al  Ha-sa, 
unless  it  were  for  an  Indian  regiment  of  the  very  lightest  of  light,  and  shortest  of 
short,  riders.  On  the  other  hand,  thousands  of  camels  could  be  collected  by  a 
European  or  Indian  agency  making  Huf-huf  its  headquarters.  A  speciality 
of  the  province  is  its  breed  of  white  asses,  and  these  are  reared  within  the  oasis. 
India  takes  a  considerable  number  of  them  for  mule-production.  All  over  Asiatic 
Turkey,  the  more  of  Al  Ha-sa  blood  a  donkey  has  in  him,  the  higher  is  his  value. 

And  now  enough  by  way  of  survey  of  the  girdle  of  coast,  desert,  and  mountain, 
making  up,  let  it  be  said,  the  outer  third  of  the  peninsula.     True,  nothing  has  been 


32 


COUNTRY   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK.    I. 


told  of  the  extensive  south-eastern  province  Hadh-ra-maut,  with  its  continuation 
northward,  Mah-ra ;  but  these  are  still  unexplored,  and  facts  relating  to  their 
animals  are  wanting.  The  maritime  kingdom  of  Oman  is  also  being  passed 
over.  Inland,  this  abounds  in  features  as  soft  and  pleasing  as  its  sea-coast  is 
threatening  and  volcanic.  Wells  and  fountains  enrich  it  agriculturally.  Of  all 
the  "  concessions "  awaiting  European  enterprise,  that  of  mining  into  the  min- 
eral treasures  of  Oman  may  perhaps  be  put  high  up  the  list.  Its  dromedaries 
are  among  the  best  in  Arabia ;  but  we  hear  nothing  of  its  horses.  In  two  suc- 
cessive reigns,  we  have  looked  over  the  stud  of  its  Sultan,  without  seeing  in  it 
a  very  superior  mare  or  stallion.  The  attendants  said  that  there  were  better 
collections  at  others  of  the  royal  palaces  and  pasture-grounds ;  and  that  Najd 
was  where  such  were  recruited  from.  With  every  indication  thus  converging 
Najd-ward,  it  is  time  to  view  the  kernel  the  shell  of  which  has  now  been  opened. 
Etymologically,  Najd  means  Highlands.  Never  had  that  word  a  deeper  place  in 
the  heart  of  Celts  in  Scotland  than  Najd  has  now  in  that  of  Arabs.  The  tribal 
offshoot  settled  on  the  Tigris  or  Euphrates  values  itself,  and  is  valued  by  others, 
according  to  its  claims  to  Najdian  origin.  The  family  domiciled  for  generations 
in  a  Syrian  or  Levantine  city,  if  it  would  find,  or  make,  for  itself  an  Arab  pedigree, 
goes  to  Najd  for  It.  Most  of  all  the  Bad-u,  however  wide  the  circle,  to  use 
a  Persian  figure,  which  the  compasses  of  his  heart  describes,  has  Najd  for  central 
spot.  From  distant  Africa  even,  not  an  Arab  who  has  kept  his  pedigree  turns 
his  footsteps  Najd-ward  without  good  hope  of  finding  kinsmen.  For  alignment's 
sake  we  have  adopted  in  our  map  the  boundary,  founded  on  geographical  feature, 
which  Palgrave  gives  to  Najd ;  ^  but,  for  our  present  purpose,  a  less  unbending 
definition  is  necessary.  Once  we  chanced  to  spend  some  time  in  Zu-bair,  a  town 
near  Bussorah,  at  the  sea  extremity  of  the  Euphrates  deserts.  Even  there, 
within  sight  of  Persia,  on  the  debatable  land  between  Semite  and  Aryan,  the 
inhabitants,  whose  long,  pensive,  feminine  features,  equally  with  their  grave  yet 


1  Namely,  these  9  provinces,  laying  themselves  out 
diagonally  from   N.E.  by  E.  to  S.W.  by  W.,  at  an 
elevation  of  from  1000  to  4000  feet : — 
A'ridh,  capital  Ar-Ri-ddh :   centre   of  all   the   most 

Pharisaical  leaven  of  Najd. 
Sa-dir :  bearing  the  flower  of  the  population  in  respect 

of  martial  qualities.      Ch.  town,  Al  Maj-ma'. 
Ya-md-ma :  Wa-ha-bi  to  the  core.      Ch.  town,  Khark 

or  Kharj. 
Ha-7-ik  (oftener  Ha-rich).     Ch.  town,  Hu-ta. 
Fa-laj  (pi.  Af-ldj). 
Da-wd-sir  :  nearly  all  valley. 
Sa-lt-la  :  a  poor  and  little  known  region. 
Washin :    important   district ;   key  to   A'ridh.      Has 


historical  towns  of  Dhii  'r  rum-ma ;  Shak-ra  or 
Shag-ra  (commercial  centre  on  route  between  Mecca 
and  Bussorah);  Kuw-wa.  An  army  in  Najd,  cut  off 
from  Washm,  would  be  in  danger  of  starvation. 
Ka-sini :  nearest  approach  to  settled  country  in  Cen- 
tral Arabia ;  tempting  to  raiders ;  its  valleys  studded 
with  villages,  granges,  and  gardens,  wrapped  in 
winding-sheets  of  sand.  Wahabite  fanaticism  here 
tempered  by  foreign  travel.  About  a  third  of  its 
population,  says  Doughty,  have  been  to  Mecca  and 
Medina,  Ku-wait  and  Bussorah,  as  caravaners. 
Important  towns,  U'nai-za,  Bu-rai-da,  Ris.  Swarms 
with  horse-buyers. 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR  ARABIA. 


33 


cheerful  manners,  revealed  their  Najdian  origin,  fondly  imagined  themselves  un- 
separated  from  Najd.  But  when  questioned  they  admitted  that,  although  the  air 
around  was  Najdian,  the  ground  itself  belonged  not  to  Najd,  but  to  its  jic-nild,  or 
flanks.  Following  the  lead  thus  afforded — the  prevailing  one  with  Arabs — by 
Najd  will  hereafter  be  indicated,  not  the  Najd  only  of  the  straitest  geographers, 
but  Najd  with  its  "  flanks "  added  :  that  is,  every  central  district,  however  pro- 
longated, the  aspects  of  which,  as  distinct  from  oases  like  Al  Ha-sa,  are  Najdian. 
Considering  that  we  have  here  the  spaces  making  up  the  very  own  country  of  the 
pure-bred  Arabian,  it  is  a  pity  that  they  have  been  but  slightly,  if  at  all,  explored 
by  European  horsemen.  The  Arab  says,  He  ivho  enters  Najd  does  not  come  out 
again.  Wahabite  fanaticism  may  have  had,  and  still  may  have,  its  share  in  this. 
But  there  are  sound  secular  reasons  also  for  Najdian  exclusiveness.  The  Arabic 
word  for  conquest  literally  means  opening.  And  the  Central  Arabian  people,  with 
their  seaboard  encroached  on  by  the  Osmanli,  and  with  other  foreigners  even 
more  distinctly  of  the  veni,  vidi,  vici  order  supposed  to  be  perpetually  on  the 
hover,  live  in  such  fear  of  spies  or  forerunners  that  their  doors,  they  think,  can- 
not be  kept  too  stricdy  bolted.  A  Sultan  of  Najd  once  boasted  to  a  British 
officer  that,  although  his  agents  w^ere  everywhere,  and  kept  him  well  informed,  he 
had  few  relations  with  foreign  States.  His  Minister  spoke  of  us  as  "  successful 
pirates " ;  laughed  outright  at  the  notion  of  our  philanthropy ;  and  eyeing  hard 
a  naval  cap,  asked  w^hether  the  wearer  was  "  one  of  those  commodores  who 
used  to  seize  vessels  in  the  Persian  Gulf"!^  The  accredited  official  of  a 
foreign  Power  who  enters  Najd  will,  so  long  as  he  keeps  to  governed  parts,  be 
taken  such  jealous  care  of,  that,  unless  some  one  kill  him  to  bring  trouble  on 
his  protector,  his  life  will  be  safe  enough  ;  but  he  will  hear  or  see  compara- 
tively little  except  by  order  or  permission.  The  private  traveller  who  avows 
himself  a  European  and  a  Christian  will,  if  he  escape  with  life,  be  passed  from 
place  to  place  with  blows  and  buffetings,  as  mad  dogs  are  in  Europe."^     As  for 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog-.  No.  28,  p.  49. 

2  Let  them  who  question  it  consult  the  pages  of  one 
who  tried  it — "  the  seeing  of  an  hungry  man,  and  the 
telling  of  a  most  weary  one" — the  traveller  Doughty. 
The  mention  of  "  mad  dogs  "  suggests  certain  facts 
bearing  on  rabies  which  Baghdad  affords.  Except 
only,  thanks  to  the  Tigris,  want  of  water,  every  con- 
dition favourable  to  this  peste  flourishes.  The  "  dog- 
days,"  lasting  half  the  year,  are  intense.  A  wet  and 
cold  winter  follows.  Every  man's  house  is  his  dung- 
heap.  Corruption  rots  in  the  ways.  Not  the  smallest 
precaution  is  taken.  If  any  native  of  Baghdad  were 
to  spy  a  dog  in  a  muzzle,  he  might,  or  might  not. 


have  the  humanity  to  free  him  of  it ;  but  he  would 
think  that  the  man  who  had  put  it  on  was  beside 
himself  Well,  with  all  this,  not  only  does  rabies 
not  produce  itself  in  the  large  free  community  of 
dogs  distributing  themselves  in  guilds  over  the  several 
qua7-tierss  but  not  all  the  jackals,  foxes,  and  wolves 
of  the  surrounding  country  introduce  it.  Perhaps 
even  stranger  ;  in  ten  years'  residence  we  have  known 
two  packs  of  English  fox-hounds,  with  German  boar- 
hounds,  and  sporting  and  house  dogs  of  every  breed 
and  no  breed,  imported  by  Europeans.  Curs  are  also 
always  being  brought  in  by  caravaners,  and  by  the 
military,  from  all  parts  of  Turkey,  Central  Asia,  and 


34 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


disguises,  they  are  as  precarious  as  in  certain  circumstances  they  are  humihating  : 
for  the  ass  to  put  on  the  Hon's  skin  shows  a  laudable  ambition,  if  a  fooHsh  one ; 
when  the  lion  dons  the  ass's,  not  only  is  there  fear  of  the  cudgel,  but  the  best 
qualities  of  the  king  of  beasts  may  go  out  of  him. 

But  to  proceed.  In  viewing  a  little  while  ago  the  barriers  of  the  pen- 
insula, we  saw,  on  the  north  and  north  -  east,  a  gravelly  desert  sloping  from  Al 
Hi-jaz  to  Al  Ha-sa  :  on  the  south,  the  "boundless  continuity"  of  desolation 
of  the  Dah-na,  or  great  red  desert,  rolling  its  sandy  billows  upward  to  the 
Najdian  confines.  Next  it  has  to  be  mentioned,  how  out  of  the  Dah-na  there 
proceed  northward,  eastward,  and  westward,  courses  within  courses  of  arms  or  off- 
shoots ;  the  tendency  of  which  is  to  soften  as  they  go,  much  as  ocean  flow- 
ing inland  loses  by  degrees  its  brine.  These  are  the  Nu-ftadh,  literally  piercers, 
or  passes.  As  natural  phenomena  they  perplex  geographers ;  but  we  cannot 
touch  on  that.  One  result  due  to  them  is  that,  not  on  the  north  and  south  only, 
but  on  every  side,  a  girdle  of  desert  encloses  inner  Arabia.  It  was  the  outer 
rim  of  this  which,  when  encountered  here  and  there  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans, 
led  them  to  imagine  that  all  the  inner  peninsula  was  unpeopled  save  by  dragons. 
The  name  "  Daughters  of  the  desert"  given  to  the  Nu-fudh  by  Arabs  ^  describes 
them  perfectly  :  earth's  surface  undergoes  transition  in  them  from  the  uninhabitable 
to  the  habitable.  Slightly  in  the  same  manner  as  the  populated  portion  of  Egypt, 
while  guarded  on  the  whole  by  deserts,  is  intersected  by  branches  of  the  Nile, 
the  central  table-land  of  Arabia  submits  itself  to  the  embraces  of  this  progeny  of 
the  southern  sand  -  waste.  The  Nu-fudh  form  deep  indentations  in  it,  like 
gulfs  in  a  mainland,  and  much  determine  its  contour.  In  many  parts,  they 
go  through  and  through  it.  Thus,  in  Central  Arabia,  plateau  land  makes  one 
country,  and  Nu-fudh  land  another  country.  The  vast  sierra-broken  plains  of 
the  former,  not  unstudded  with  historical  cities,  and  rich  in  oasis  hamlets,  here 
but    slightly   claim    us.     The   interest   for    us    is    in    Nu-fudh  land' — but    another 


Egypt ;  yet  we  have  never  seen  or  heard  of  either  a 
case  of  rabies  in  the  canine,  or  hydrophobia  in  the 
human,  species.  How  widely  different  the  case  is  in 
India  !  The  greatest  legislators  in  the  modern  world 
— those  of  Simla — make  and  amend  Acts  about  it  : 
piles  of  dogs  are  done  to  death  annually,  to  the  horror 
of  the  natives,  by  the  magistracy ;  and  still  do  mad 
dogs  rank  with  snakes  and  swollen  rivers  as  among 
the  checks  to  horse-breeding.  Once  in  the  Deccan 
it  was  ours  to  breed,  and  feed  on  corn  till  he  was  a 
four-year-old,  a  colt  destined  only  to  be  bitten  in  his 
hovel  by  a  running  cur.  After  about  a  month  rabies 
followed  :  before  the  scene  ended,  the  poor  animal 


had  half  destroyed  himself  with   his  teeth,   and  by 
knocking  himself  about. 

^  At  the  very  heart  of  the  Arab's  speech  is  personi- 
fication. Everything  is  with  him  father,  mother, 
son,  sister,  or  daughter,  of  something  else.  Thus 
Abu  '1  khashm,  father  of  the  nose,  common  name 
for  the  carrier-pigeon,  from  the  size  of  his  beak, 
and  the  fleshy  protuberance  at  the  base  of  it  ;  Um- 
mu  '1  kha-ba-ith,  mother  of  crimes,  a  name  often 
given  to  wine  ;  Ibnu  a-wi  (vulg.  wa-wi),  the  jackal ; 
yet  more  poetically  Bintu  'I  ja-bal,  daughter  of  the 
mountain — i.e.,  the  echo  ;  and  so  forth. 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR   ARABIA. 


35 


word  for  Bad-u  land.  We  know  of  but  two  of  our  countrymen  who  have  crossed 
the  peninsula  from  sea  to  sea,  necessarily  taking  in  their  way  two  or  more  courses 
of  the  Nu-fudh.  In  1819  Captain  Sadlier  of  the  47th  Foot,  sent  by  Government 
to  congratulate  the  Egyptian  Commander  Ib-ra-him  Pasha  on  his  successes  against 
the  Wahabis,  marched  1200  miles,  in  European  dress,  across  every  natural  obstacle 
from  Ka-tif  to  Yam-bu'.  On  reaching  the  Pasha's  camp  near  Medina,  he  found 
him  to  have  acquired  in  the  campaign  three  hundred  mares  and  horses.  "  These," 
says  the  Captain's  Journal,  "  his  Excellency  has  collected  from  the  different  tribes 
of  the  districts  which  he  visited,  who  scarcely  retain  either  horse  or  mare  to  propa- 
gate the  species ;  these  parts  of  Arabia  will  therefore  remain  destitute  of  good 
horses,  which  will  now  be  transferred  in  a  great  measure  to  Egypt,  whither  his 
Excellency  has  heretofore  despatched  a  great  number,  independently  of  the  num- 
ber carried  out  of  Arabia  by  the  soldiery."  ^  The  same  traveller  also  states, 
that  if  any  of  the  Bedouin  near  his  route  had  still  a  good  horse,  he  would  not 
venture  to  bring  it  for  sale,  lest  it  should  be  seized,  and  he  himself  dismissed 
empty-handed  and  on  foot,  to  be  laughed  at :  a  sounder  view  than  that  of  some 
others  who,  because  of  their  having  passed  through  portions  of  the  same  country 
without  seeing  horses,  have  concluded  that  there  were  none  in  it ;  the  finding  of 
horses  to  buy  being  in  truth  as  much  a  sijecial  gift  as  the  buying  of  them  when 
they  are  before  one."  Half  a  century  after  Captain  Sadlier,  Mr  W.  G.  Palgrave 
(1862-63)  posing  as  "a  native  travelling  -  doctor,"  he  and  his  Syrian  comrade 
"  dressed  like  ordinary  middle-class  travellers  of  inner  Syria,"  -^  passed  right  over 
the  peninsula,  traversing  three  main  segments  of  Nu-fudh  land.  The  season  was 
midsummer :  Nature's  aspects  in  the  Nu  -  fudh  were  so  Tartarean  as  to  make 
"  clothes,  baggage,  and  housings  all  take  the  smell  of  burning ; "  the  "  suffocating 


1  op.  cii.  in  Catalog.  No.  3. 

2  Arabia  is  not  singular  in  this  respect.  The  fol- 
lowing passage  in  a  paper  on  "  Cape  Horses  "  in  an 
old  Review  deserves  reprinting  : — 

"  A  purchasing-  ofificer  at  the  Cape  should  not  only 
be  gifted  with  the  leather  of  a  post-boy  and  the  pa- 
tience of  a  Job,  but  he  ought  to  have  time  for  the  exer- 
cise of  a  painstaking  search  ;  steering  a  zigzag  course, 
passing  by  no  /wry-looking  farm-house  without  a 
'  peep  into  the  stable,'  to  see  what  manner  of '  paards ' 
(nags)  are  there.  ...  As  was  our  wont,  ^^•e  were  in 
the  saddle  one  fine  morning  at  early  dawn.  .  .  . 
Our  first  halt  was  at  the  farm  of  a  person  who  re- 
joices in  the  sobriquet  of '  Zwart  Cop  '  (Black  Pate). 
..."  Come  in  and  eat  whilst  your  horses  have  a 
feed.'   .   .   . 

"  During  our  repast  the  conversation  was  drawn 
to  horses.      Our  host  protested   he   had   none.     Le 


Merchant's  chin  dropped  into  his  waistcoat  in  despair. 
I  gave  him  a  nod  of  encouragement,  and  proposed  a 
stroll.  Mynheer  said  '  Ja,'  and  in  a  very  few  minutes 
we  were  in  the  stable,  where  we  found  ten  uncommonly 
neat  bay  geldings.  I  inquired  as  to  their  ownership, 
seeing  that  our  host  had  none  of  his  own.  The  an- 
swer was,  '  Oh  !  these  are  my  '  span '  (waggon  teams), 
and  not  for  sale.'  Knowing  what  that  meant,  I 
begged  to  see  the  horses  trotted  out — a  bit  of  flat- 
tery a  Boer  is  open  to,  his  span  being  his  pride — and 
we  noted  5  as  fit  for  troopers.  A  second  span  was 
brought  up  from  the  field,  from  which  we  picked  4 
more.  Money  was  offered,  and  accepted  after  the 
usual  amount  of  coquetting,  and  by  the  time  our 
hacks  had  finished  their  bait  we  had  added  9  good 
horses  to  the  roll  of  the  7th  Dragoon  Guards." — Op. 
cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  26,  vol.  iv.  pp.  112,  113. 
5  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  7,  vol.  i.  p.  5. 


36 


COUNTRY   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  I. 


sand-pits,"  "  burning  walls,"  with  ever  and  anon  a  prospect  seeming  "  a  vast  sea  of 
fire  ruffled  into  little  red-hot  waves,"  ^  threw  the  writer  for  further  metaphor  on 
the  poet  of  the  '  Inferno.'  The  traveller  who,  to  display  his  powers  or  beguile  his 
readers,  indulges  in  such  extreme  descriptions,  must  expect  to  be  called  to  account 
for  it ;  but  we  prefer  discounting  the  excess,  and  accepting  the  remainder.  Certainly 
we  have  never  seen  any  such  terrible  abysses  ;  but  then  we  have  never  sought 
for  them.  The  only  "daughters  of  the  desert"  encountered  by  us  have  been  such 
as,  after  meandering  far  from  home,  had  turned  comparatively  gracious  and  amiable  : 
not  hundreds  of  feet  deep,  but  more  like  empty  river-beds  ;  striped  with  cattle-paths  ; 
entwined  with  marks  of  coming  and  going ;  well  spread  with  bunch-grass,  and  with 
shrubs  a  man's  height  or  more,  especially  the  tufted  camel  euphorbia  called  gha-dhd 
—the  distinctive  feature  always  being  the  dunes,  or  ridges  of  red  sand,  which  rise 
abruptly  on  either  hand.  And  yet  one  summer  a  mare  was  brought  to  us  at  Baghdad 
from  the  Bedouin  of  Western  Arabia  whose  state  suggested  the  "  burning  lakes  "  of 
Palgrave.  Her  hind-legs  had  got  as  scorched  and  seared  in  crossing  the  Nu-fudh  as 
if  fire  had  done  it.  One  of  the  limbs  it  chanced  was  white,  and  as  long  as  she 
lived  remained  red  and  hairless — a  proof,  perhaps,  that  skin  producing  white  hair 
is  naturally  weaker  than  the  dark-coloured. 

In  1865  an  explorer  of  a  different  school,  the  well-known  military  pioneer  Lewis 
Pelly,^  then  Political  Resident  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  striking  right  down  from  Ku-wait, 
at  the  head  of  the  Gulf,  to  beard  the  aged  Fai-sal,  Head  of  the  Wahabite  empire, 
in  his  capital,  Ar  Ri-adh,  crossed,  and  described  in  plain  official  language,  the  broad 
belt  of  unmitigated  desert  which  shuts  in  Central  Arabia  on  the  east.  The  dashing 
march  of  sixteen  days,  including  halts,  which  it  took  the  party  to  make  Ri-adh, 
introduced  them  to  one  of  the  worst  of  the  Nu-fudh,  called  the  "lesser  Dah-na," 
from  its  resemblance  to  its  "mother,"  the  great  southern  desert — a  long  strip  of 
bareness,  at  one  place  fifty  miles  broad,  running  up  towards  the  stony  wastes  at 
the  head  of  the  Gulf  of  Persia.  The  Journal  kept  has  been  printed,  but  not,  we 
believe,  published;  and  perhaps  the  reader  might  relish  an  extract  from  it.  But 
first  a  word  in  regard  to  horses.  For  the  purpose  of  helping  them  to  fall  in  with 
likely  colts,  a  professional  buyer  went  with  the  camp ;  but  not  one  was  forth- 
comino".  The  few  groups  of  Bedouin  met  were  mostly  camel-riders.  A  day's 
journey  from  the  sea,  a  plump  of  desert  spearmen — the  wildest-looking  of  creatures 
— came  up  to   them  at  a  scamper,  mounted  on  camels  and  mares.^      Only  once 


^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  7,  vol.  i.  p.  92. 

2  Whose  death  as  Lieut.-General  Sir  L.  Pelly, 
K.C.B.,  K.C.S.I.,  and  M.P.  for  Hackney  (N.),  has 
happened  while  this  is  being  printed. 

^  Some  years  ago,  a  Swiss  merchant  of  Baghdad, 


when  crossing  the  same  desert  on  a  dromedary,  had 
the  misfortune  to  meet  a  similar  party  riding  two  and 
two  on  camels  ;  the  front  rank  man,  so  to  call  him, 
armed  with  a  short  spear  or  sword,  and  the  fellow  be- 
hind him  (in  Arabic  his  ra-dif)  with  a  lighted  match- 


CHAP.  III.  PENINSULAR   ARABIA.  3; 

a  colt  was  brought  for  sale.  As  above  observed,  it  no  more  follows  necessarily 
that  the  country  along  their  route  had  none  to  yield,  than  it  would  follow  from 
one's  crossing  India  without  seeing  any  robbers  that  they  had  all  been  laid  by 
the  heels.  But  evidence  is  accumulating  that  in  large  portions  of  Arabia  proper, 
were  it  not  for  its  Will-o'-the-wisp-like  nomads,  horses  would  be  rare.  Among 
the  glimpses  of  the  "lesser  Dah-na"  given  in  the  Journal  are  the  following: — ■ 

"There  are  altogether  seven  distinct  lines  of  sand-hills  with  their  intervening  plains 
forming  the  breadth  of  the  (lesser)  Dah-na  at  the  line  where  I  crossed  it.  But  this  particular 
line  is  selected  on  account  of  its  comparative  easiness  ;  and  we  could  observe  that  on  either 
hand  the  region  became  more  confused  and  broken  up.  .  .  .  On  the  whole,  the  (lesser)  Dah-na, 
as  we  saw  it,  resembles  seven  huge  rollers,  with  intervening  plains  of  sea.  Standing  on  the 
top  of  the  last  or  westernmost  ridge,  which  may  be  about  a  couple  of  miles  wide,  you  overlook 
an  horizon-bounded  plain,  scrubby  with  brushwood,  and  flushed  here  and  there  with  scud  and 
sand.  You  might  fancy  yourself  standing  on  a  sandy  cliff  and  overlooking  the  ocean,  so  clearly 
defined  is  the  base  of  the  sand-ridge  and  the  commencement  of  the  plain.     .     .     . 

"  Compared  with  the  vast  waste  we  have  now  crossed,  even  the  most  desert  parts  of  Persia 
seem  wooded  and  peopled ;  for  we  have  seen  neither  tree,  hut,  nor  fowl,  and  scarce  a  goat,  since 
we  left  Ku-wait."  1 

What  Sadlier  and  Palgrave  did  for  the  girth  of  the  peninsula,  and  Pelly  for 
its  north-eastern  quarter,  a  brave  Englishwoman  and  her  husband  did  for  its  north- 
western shoulder.  All  her  countrymen,  and  still  more  her  country-women,  may  be 
proud  of  Lady  Anne  Blunt's  journey.  Entering  from  towards  Damascus,  and 
holding  south-east  along  the  deep  serpentine  depression  called  Wa-di  Sir-han,  a 
principal  line  of  communication  both  for  merchants  and  Bedouin  between  Sha-mi-ya 
and  middle  Arabia,  they  made  their  way  past  the  oval  oasis  of  Al  Jauf — place  of 
wells,  corn-fields,  and  date-plantations — through  a  course  of  true  Nu-fudh  to  the 
province  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  the  capital  of  which,  Ha-yil,  stands  near  the  Hajj 
road  between  Bussorah  and  Medina.  And  here  it  more  and  more  comes  out  how 
even  these  Central  Arabian  sand-streams  participate  in  Nature's  blessed  diversity 
of  feature.  True,  it  was  winter.  Still,  had  the  Nu-fudh  been  all  of  one  pattern, 
Lady  A.  Blunt  could  not  have  written  of  the  one  threaded  by  them  that  it  was 


lock.  If  he  had  chanced  to  come  on  them  in  their  1  a  certam  weed  will  hear  with  interest  that  his  one 
tents,  the  desert  law  of  da-khil,  or  hospitium,  would  |  appeal  was  for  a  few  of  his  own  havannahs  ;  by  refus- 
have  protected  him,  and  a  sheep  would  have  been     !     ing  which  the  ruffians  put  themselves  very  low  down 


killed  for  him.  But  meeting  him  in  the  open,  where 
with  Arabs  it  is  "no  sin  for  a  man  to  labour  in  his 
vocation,"  after  some  discussion  on  the  vital  question 
of  his  throat,  they  stripped  him  and  his  two  men 
not  only  of  their  arms  and  dromedaries,  but  of  eveiy 
rag  of  clothing,  and  turned  them  adrift  in  the  desert. 
Happily  the  Euphrates  was  near,  so  that  the  subject 
of  the  incident  is  still  alive  to  tell  of  it.      Lo\-ers  of 


among  the  world's  caterans.  They  showed  also,  it 
is  worth  noting,  the  same  scruples  about  taking  a 
prize  unawares  as  their  Zulu  congeners  did  with  the 
Prince  Imperial.  Having  marked  down  their  bird 
while  on  the  ground,  they  waited  till  he  was  up  again, 
before  actually  falling  on  him. 
1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  28. 


38 


COUNTRY  OF   THE   ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


"  better  wooded  and  richer  in  pasturage  than  any  part  of  the  desert  passed  since 
leaving  Damascus,"  containing  "  several  kinds  of  camel-pasture,  especially  one  new 
to  us  called  adi\  on  which  they  say  sheep  can  feed  for  a  month  without  wanting 
water;  and  more  than  one  kind  of  grass,"  so  that  "both  camels  and  mares  are 
pleased  with  the  place,  and  we  are  delighted  with  the  abundance  of  firewood 
for  our  camps."  Out  of  this  there  proceeded  the  discovery  that  "the  Nu-fudh 
account  for  everything"- — ^that  is,  for  Central  Arabia  yielding  horses.  "  In  the 
hard  desert,"  it  is  stated,  "  there  is  nothing  a  horse  can  eat ;  but  here  [in  the  Nu- 
fudh]  there  is  plenty.  ...  It  is  in  reality  the  home  of  the  Bedouins  during  a  great 
part  of  the  year.  Its  only  want  is  water,  for  it  contains  but  few  wells  ;  all  along 
the  edge  it  is  thickly  inhabited ;  and  Ra-dhi  [their  guide]  tells  us  that  in  the 
spring,  when  the  grass  is  green  after  the  rain,  the  Bedouins  care  nothing  for  water, 
as  their  camels  are  in  milk,  and  they  go  for  weeks  without  it,  wandering  far  into 
the   interior  of  the  sand  desert."  ^ 

With  such  high  authority  confirmatory  of  the  conclusion  that  Nu-fudh  land 
means  Bad-u  land,  we  do  not  think  that  the  reader's  time  has  been  wasted  in 
this  survey  of  it.  Austere  as  are  its  features,  every  breed,  let  us  remember,  in 
order  to  be  thriving  and  permanent,  must  be  in  harmony  with  its  environments. 
For  the  production  of  those  overgrown  horses,  having  watery  bodies  supported 
on  thin  legs,  which  are  too  often  seen  in  greener,  and  for  horse-show  purposes  more 
fostering,  pastures,  nothing  could  be  more  unpromising.  But  the  conditions  here 
presented,  and  the  way  in  which  the  mares  and  foals,  in  order  to  pick  up  a  living, 
are  kept  constantly  on  the  rummage,  form  great  aids  of  pure  breeding  in  refining 
the  Najdi  horse  from  dross  or  lumber,  and  making  him  what  he  is,  a  desert 
diamond.  If,  as  seen  above,  Najd  is  to  every  Bad-u  what  Al  Hi-jaz  is  to  every 
Muslim,  the  Caaba  of  the  former  is  its  Nu-fudh.  To  love  one's  birthplace  is  of 
relis'ion,  tausfht  Muhammad ;  ^  and  to  life's  last  moment  the  heart  of  nomad  o-oes 
out  to  the  pure  soft  sand  of  his  Nu-fudh  as  affectionately  as  if,  like  the  young 
of  the  wild  ass  and  antelope,  he  were  born  in  it,  as  indeed  may  happen.  When 
a  tribe  on  the  move  is  holding  Najd-ward,  and  the  swelling  white  brow  of  one 
of  these  great  natural  defiles  upraises  itself,   "Al  hamdti.  /'  Illahl^   the  Nu-fudh 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  12,  vol.  i.  pp.  157,  158. 

^  A  '  Saying'  \y.  p.  20,  in  f.n.  3.  Also  Index  I.,  art. 
Ha-dith]. 

^  Praise  be  to  Allah,  one  of  three  phrases  ever 
rolhng  ofif  the  tongue  of  Arabs.  The  other  two 
are  In  ska  Allah,  if  it  please  Allah:  and  M&  sha 
Allah,  What  has  pleased  Allah,  used  to  indicate 
surprise,  admiration,  approval,  also  by  way  of  (half- 
and-half)   welcome.      In    an    old    magazine    article 


{op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  10,  vol.  vii.,  "Selections," 
p.  4),  containing  an  account  of  "  the  Bedouin  Arabs 
of  the  desert  and  their  horses,''  it  is  amusing  to  read 
that,  from  fear  of  the  evil  eye,  when  showing  a  horse 
to  a  stranger  they  never  omitted  to  pray  to  the  great 
"  Macha  AUaa  ! "  This  is  like  Marco  Polo's  saying 
of  one  of  the  populations  of  Central  Asia,  that  they 
were  "  worshippers  of  Mahommet "  ! 


CHAP.  III. 


PENINSULAR  ARABIA. 


39 


again,"  goes  trilling  out  from  thousands  of  women's  voices.  Bare,  and  no  more 
than  habitable,  as  his  country  may  appear  to  us,  the  Arab  perfectly  realises  that 
it  was  made  for  him,  and   he  for  it. 

Before  leaving  these  "  flanks  of  Najd "  we  must  well  view  their  northern 
segment,  the  important  province  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  but  just  now  mentioned. 
Natural  features,  boundaries,  and  iDopulation,^  may  all  be  dismissed  with  a  word. 
Of  the  first,  the  most  prominent  are  the  two  parallel  mountain-ranges  of  Ja-bal 
A-ja  and  Ja-bal  Sal-ma.  The  inhabitants,  as  everywhere,  are  mixed  nomadic, 
agricultural,  and  industrial ;  spread  over  a  stony  yet  not  unfertile  surface  of 
variegated  oases,  towns,  villages,  and  homesteads.  The  authorities  on  these 
points  are,  up  to  1862,  Palgrave ;  thereafter,  to  1877,  Doughty;  to  1879,  Lady 
x^.  Blunt.  The  first  resided  for  a  considerable  time,  in  his  disguise,  in  Ha-yil, 
a  town  easily  accessible  from  Baghdad  in  twenty  long  marches.  The  second 
did  the  same  in  Arab  clothes,  or  rags  rather,  but  not  concealing  his  nationality. 
While  the  third,  and  her  husband,  made  their  entry  in  the  character  of  "persons 
of  distinction,  in  search  of  other  persons  of  distinction."  How  all  these  fared, 
and  what  they  saw,  will  be  found  written  in  their  several  narratives.  Yet  it 
is  essential  to  our  subject  that,  instead  of  merely  referring  to  works  which  all 
may  not  possess,  we  should  pause  to  open  up  to  the  reader  how,  within  the 
memory  of  those  still  living,  a  Shekhly  filibuster,  of  the  type  alluded  to  in  a 
previous  chapter,  erected  in  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  a  petty  royalty  over  townsmen 
first,  and  Bedouin  afterwards  ;  how,  at  the  time  of  writine,  whatever  of 
government,  in  the  European  sense,  middle  Arabia  enjoys  has  Ha-yil  for  its 
centre.  It  has  been  seen  how  the  Wahabite  empire,^  twice  in  its  history,  has 
suffered  suppression,  —  early  in  the  century  from  Egyptian  armies ;  in  our  day 
from  internal  causes.     Among  the  numerous  gallants  of  desert  lineage  stirred  by  the 


^  In  illustration  of  the  variability  of  statistics, 
especially  of  population,  compare  Palgrave's  estimate 
with  Doughty's.  The  former,  in  Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  ii. 
p.  254  (1S75),  gives  162,000  as  the  "total  popula- 
tion" of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  exclusive  of  an  oblong 
strip,  called  by  him  "  Upper  Ka-sim,"  between  Sham- 
mar  mountains  and  valley  of  Lower  Ka-sim ;  to 
which  strip  he  assigns,  on  hearsay,  a  further  popu- 
lation of  35,000.  According  to  Doughty,  the  settled 
population  may  be  "  hardly  20,000  souls  :  add  to 
these  the  tributary  nomads,  Ba-ni  Wah-hab,  2500  ; 
the  Bishr  in  the  south,  say  3000,  or  they  are  less  ; 
northern  Harb  in  the  obedience  of  Ibn  Ra-shid, 
say  2000 ;  southern  Sham-mar,  hardly  2000  ;  midland 
Heteym,  say  1500;  Sha-ra-rat,  say  2500;  and  be- 
sides them  no  more.     In  all,  say  14,000  persons  or 


less  ;  and  the  sum  of  stable  and  nomad  dwellers 
may  be  not  much  better  than  30,000  souls  "  {op.  cit. 
in  Catalog.  No.  2,  vol.  ii.  p.  20).  Possibly  this 
huge  discrepancy  depends  on  different  limits  being 
given  to  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  by  the  two  authorities 
respectively.  But  how  shall  we  explain  Palgrave's 
(loco  cit.  supra)  allowing  "about  15,000  or  16,000 
souls"  to  Ha-yil;  while  Doughty  states  the  num- 
ber at  3000  souls  only — (vol.  i.  p.  617)  ?  For  a  reason 
which  it  is  unnecessary  here  to  mention,  we  hold 
Palgrave's  figures  of  no  account. 

-  Called  also,  after  the  prince  whose  prowess 
shaped  it,  the  empire  of  the  Ibn  Su-u'ds.  As  dis- 
posing the  sword-power  of  all  subject  to  it,  the 
Head  of  it  has,  or  had,  A-mir  for  title,  also  Sultan  ; 
and  as  religious  exemplar,  I-mam. 


40  COUNTRY  OF  THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

troubles  of  the  former  epoch  to  couch  the  spear  at  fortune's  prizes  was  A'bdu 
'11a  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar ;  whose  family  name  was  Ra-shid.  Finding  his  native 
province  in  the  grip  of  others,  this  young  blood  rode  out  of  Ha  -  yil,  with 
little  but  his  good  Sham-mar  pedigree  to  help  him.  What  was  written  for  him 
proved  to  be  the  foremost  rank,  first  in  A-mir  Tur-ki's,  then  A-mir  Fai-sal's, 
armies  :  till  when,  after  many  "  feats  of  broil  and  battle,"  chiefly  through  his  emi- 
nent qualities,  Najd  recovered  its  independence,  A-mir  Fai-sal  rewarded  him  with 
the  viceroyalty  of  its  northern  appanage,  Ja-bal  Sham-mar.  As  always  happens 
in  the  East,  vicarious  gradually  merged  in  independent  power.  A'bdu  '11a  himself 
before  he  died  {c.  1844),  by  knitting  to  himself  his  powerful  desert  kinsfolk,  half 
accomplished  this  object.  His  son  and  successor,  Ti-lal,  completed  it.  Numerous 
influences  deadly  to  Wahabyism  issued  in  his  time  out  of  Ha-yil ;  great  pieces 
of  the  Najdian  empire,  loosened  through  intrigue  or  by  natural  processes,  in- 
cluded themselves,  seemingly  of  their  own  accord,  within  his  southern  and 
eastern  frontiers.  In  other  directions  also  he  put  out  his  hand  further  and 
further.  His  death  might  easily  have  undone  this ;  but  it  was  otherwise 
ordered.  If  revolutions  are  not  made  with  rose-water  in  Europe,  no  more 
are  successions  always  from  sire  to  son  in  Arabia.  Ti-lal  left  several  sons ; 
the  eldest,  Ban-dar,  barely  arrived  at  manhood.  But  two  formidable  brothers 
also  survived  him — sons  of  A'bdu  '11a — and  one  of  these  took  up  the  Shekhate, 
only  to  be  cut  off  after  two  or  three  years.^  Then  Ban-dar  had  a  turn  of  it  :  but 
all  the  time  the  true  hero  was  being  kept  waiting ;  exercising  his  talents  in  the 
office  of  A-mir,  or  marshal,  of  pilgrim  armies  on  the  road  to  Mecca.  This  brother 
of  Ti-lal  was  Muhammad — to  give  him  his  full  name,  Muhammad  ibn  A'bdi  '11a, 
al  Ra-shid — at  this  moment  prince  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  and  foremost  man  in  all 
Arabia  :  that  is,  if  before  these  pages  are  printed,  the  fate  which  he  has  meted 
out  to  so  many  do  not  overtake  him. 

"  The  tug  of  your  heart  is  the  voice  of  your  fate," 

says  Schiller;  2  and  with  the  proclamation  of  Ban-dar  the  "tug"  came  to  Muham- 
mad, then,  as  it  chanced,  at  a  distance  from  Ha-yil.  x^fter  a  time  he  returned, 
apparently  submissive ;  but  in  reality  most  dangerous.  If  all  that  we  have  to 
do  is  to  accept  Carlyle's  word  for  it  that  the  true  Konning,  King,  or  Ableman,  sup- 
posing him  to  be  discoverable,  has  a  "divine  right"  over  us  ;  if  the  world's  handed- 


1  It  is  said  that  Ban-dar,  aided  by  his  next 
brother,  Badr,  obtained  the  chiefship  by  shooting 
down  his  uncle,  Mut-a'b.  Doughty  gives  one  version 
of  it  in  vol.  ii.  pp.  14  and  15  of  his  "Travels"  ;  the 
only  feature  of  improbability  in  which  is,  that  a  brother 


of  Ti-lal,  himself  a  travelled  man,  should   have  suf- 
fered two  such  young  scapegraces  to  make  a  target  of 
him  from  a  loophole  inside  his  own  castle. 
-  In  Wallenstein. 


CHAP.  III.  ■     PENINSULAR  ARABIA.  41 

clown  traditions  both  east  and  west  the  Caucasus  have  aught  of  prescription 
in  them, — then  may  the  method  in  which,  on  a  spark  falHng-  on  the  powder, 
this  man  made  himself  master  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  admit  of  justification ; 
but  Arabia,  to  her  credit,  does  not  think  so.  The  massacre  by  him  of  his 
nephews  and  cousins  is  described  both  by  Lady  A.  Blunt  and  Mr  Doughty — 
with  some  variety  of  detail  naturally,  seeing  that  Ha-yil  has  no  newspapers.  In 
its  essential  features,  the  story  appeared  long  ago  in  Judges  (ch.  ix.  5) ;  where 
we  are  told  how  "  Abimelech  went  unto  his  father's  house  at  Ophrah,  and 
slew  his  brethren,  the  sons  of  Jerubbaal,  being  threescore  and  ten  persons, 
upon  one  stone."  Muhammad's  victims  were  not  so  many ;  but  his  work  was 
equally  well  finished.  In  one  day  he  despatched  with  his  own  hand  A-mir  Ban- 
dar ;  and  seizing  the  castle,  or  palace,  had  every  male  who  could  be  found  of 
the  stock  of  A'bdu  '11a  butchered  before  him.  In  Arabia  a  man  is  not  con- 
sidered murdered  till  every  one  on  whom  devolves,  or  may  at  a  future  time 
devolve,  the  sacred  duty  of  avenging  him  is  sent  to  the  same  bourn  ;  and  this,  if 
restraining  the  wolfish  appetite,  makes  the  work  go  merrily  on  when  started.  It 
further  seems — and  here  the  Arab  resembles  the  tiger — that  no  one  who  has  once 
discovered  the  fine  effects  of  man-killing^  will  afterwards  condescend  to  smaller 
practice.  A-mir  Muhammad's  dagger-exploits  now  amount  to  a  large  number.  The 
first  to  bring  such  topics  under  artistic  treatment  speaks  of  a  "  most  brilliant  con- 
stellation of  murders,  comprehending  three  Majesties,  three  Serene  Highnesses,  and 
one  Excellency,"  as  all  lying  "within  so  narrow  a  field  of  time  as  between  a.d.  15S8 
and  1635."^  No  Arab  since  the  Crusades  ever  had  the  chance  of  making  a  score 
like  that.  But  from  the  latest  accounts  it  is  evident  that  the  "  diamond  cut  dia- 
mond" policy  of  the  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  professional — the  "murder  him  before  he 
murder  you "  method — is  progressing.  We  do  not  feel  discourse  of  this  nature 
to  be  a  straying  from  our  subject.  If  any  reader  incline  to  think  so,  we  ask 
him  to  reserve  his  judgment.  The  connection  between  Arabian  politics  and 
Arabian  horses  came  out  just  now,  when  it  was  seen  in  Captain  Sadlier's  journal 
how  the  wars  of  Wahabyism  stripped  the  country  of  its  mares.  The  effect 
of  the  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  programme  on  the  stock  of  the  desert  will  appear 
presently.  Meanwhile  we  are  not  done  with  A-mir  Muhammad.  Several 
allusions  have  been  made  to  the  diminished  state  in  our  day  of  the  Ibn 
Su-ii'ds  of  Najd.  The  last  great  prince,  so  far,  of  their  line,  A-mir  Fai-sal — he 
who  received  Sir  L.  Pelly — died  in  1865.  Then  broke  out  those  dissensions,  at 
first  between  his  two  sons,  and  afterwards  throughout  the  family,  which  favoured 
the  growth  of  the    Ibn    Ra-shids.     So   mutually   interconnected    are    the    stunting 

'  Mu7-dc7-  considej-ed  as  one  of  tlie  Fine  Arts :  Thomas  De  Quincey. 

F 


42 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


of  the  central  stem  and  the  out-branching  of  its  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  offshoot,  that 
the  Najdian  empire  is  sometimes  even  said  to  have  died  down  in  southern,  to 
revive  again  in  northern,  Arabia.  But  this  view  is  superficial.  True,  in  i8S8  A-mir 
Muhammad  crowned  his  House's  triumph  over  its  ci-devant  suzerains  by  swooping 
down  on  Ar  Ri-adh  with  machine-guns  and  breech-loaders,  and  forcing  on  it  a 
puppet  Government.  Not  content  with  that,  he  accomplished  a  few  months 
afterwards  another  piece  of  family  extermination,  this  time  rather  in  the  Tarquin 
style — that  is,  by  the  hand  of  horsemen  sent  from  Ha-yil  struck  down  mercilessly 
the  tallest  poppies  in  the  Najdian  garden,  Fai-sal's  three  princely  grandsons,  Sa-a'd, 
Muhammad,  and  A'bdu  '11a ;  who,  unable  to  brook  the  family  downfall,  had  fled  to 
Kharj  in  the  adjacent  district  of  Ya-ma-ma,  called  for  its  fertility  the  Paradise  of 
Najd,  and  famed  in  Arabian  story  for  the  bravery  of  its  men  and  the  esprit 
of  its  women.  Out  of  the  last-cited  performance  blood-revenge  has  followed  : 
numerous  panoramic  scenes  are,  as  we  write,  evolving  themselves  in  the  desert. 
Muhammad,  if  report  say  true,  has  sometimes  had  the  worst  of  it.  In  a  "God- 
governed  "  country  like  Central  Arabia  it  may  even  be  that  the  "  writing  on 
the  wall "  has  appeared  to  him.  We  make  not  this  remark  to  speculate  or 
prophesy  of  the  future.  In  the  prime  of  life,  and  full  of  activity  and  projects, 
the  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  chief  may  not  even  yet  have  reached  his  limits.  In  1887, 
when  the  writer  passed  through  Sha-mi-ya,  he  found  the  two  great  palm  oases  of 
Shi-tha-tha  and  Rah-ha-li-ya  all  in  a  flutter  after  one  of  his  ghaz-us.  Scorning  to 
strike  settled  folk,  he  had  swept  northward  like  a  hurricane — as  a  few  years  previ- 
ously he  had  done  to  within  sight  of  Damascus — driving  before  him  his  natural 
enemies  the  Ae-ni-za.  With  him  were  the  big  caldrons,  each  able  to  take 
in  three  camels,  which  the  Blunts  saw  at  Ha-yil.  Everything  about  him  was 
magnified  by  rumour  :  the  size  of  his  squadrons  ;  the  sacks  of  dollars  carried  on 
his  camels ;  the  arms  and  dresses  of  his  ri-jd-jil  or  followers.  The  Arab  ideal 
is  thus  depicted  by  the  poet  A'mr  : — 

[The  tribes  know]  that  we  are  spurners  when  angry. 
And  acceptors  when  pleased  ; 
Defenders  when  submitted  to. 
And  the  devil  when  defied. ^ 

Similarly  another  poet :  ^ — 


1  The  idea  in  the  first  two  lines  probably  is  that  of 
rejecting  and  accepting  presents  —  one  of  the  high 
points  of  diplomacy  with  Orientals.  Military  com- 
manders who  do  not  understand  it  may  one  day  so 
misbestow  their  gifts  as  to  be  mistaken  for  suppliants  ; 
and  the  next,  accept   an  offering  from  those  whom 


tliey  intend  to  punish,  without  realising  that  their 
doing  so  means  alliance.  An  excellent  proverb  of  the 
Arabs  is  :  Be  7ione  so  sweet  as  to  be  swallowed j  and 
none  so  bitter  as  to  be  spat  out. 

2  In   the  classical  anthology  Al  Ha-ma-sa :  Frey- 
tag's  edit.,  p.  47. 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR  ARABIA. 


43 


White  [i.e.,  bare]  are  the  parting-places  of  our  hair  :  ^  ever  on  the  boil  our  flesh-pots  : 

AVe  compromise  from  our  flocks  and  herds  the  blood-revenges  due  by  us  :  - 

Mine  the  race  to  whose  founders  ever  was  fatal 

The  cry  of  the  combatants,  "  Ho  !  where  are  the  front-fighters  !  "  -  ^ 

All  this  well  describes  Muhammad.  Starve  your  dog  and  he  zuili  follozu  you, 
fatten  him  and  he  zvilL  bite  you,  is  an  Arab  proverb  ;  but  such  churlishness  has  no 
place  at  Ha-yil.  Fear  first,  brotherhood  afterwards  ;  pitiless  smiting  to-day,  kissing 
and  feastino-  and  beine  friends  to-morrow,  is  the  A-mir's  method.  Out  of  an 
annual  revenue  of,  as  estimated,  _2/"40,ooo  (in  kind  and  silver),  Doughty  sets  down 
^^1500  as  going-  up  the  chimney  of  the  public  guest-house.  Another  secret  of  his 
popularity  is  the  firmness  of  his  rule,  and  the  even-handed  justice,  free  from 
bribery  and  the  craft  of  clerks  and  lawyers,  which,  seated  literally  "  in  the  gate  " 
like  David,  he  daily  dispenses  at  Ha-yil.^  None  can  level  at  him  the  reproach 
cast  on  Mah-mud  of  Ghaz-ni  by  an  old  woman  whose  son  had  been  taken  by 
banditti  in  his  Persian  provinces — "  Keep  no  more  territory  than  you  can  rightly 
govern."  Travellers  know  that  they  are  in  his  country  from  there  being  no 
longer  any  robbers.  Yet  with  all  this  let  none  suppose  that  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  fills, 
or  ever  will  fill,  the  place  of  the  old  Najdian  empire.  Patriotism  may  be  put  aside. 
The  use  and  purpose  of  all  the  web  of  confederacy  which  the  A-mir's  wits  have 
woven  is  simply  what  the  immortal  Squeers  so  racily  described,  the  "  swelling  of 
one  "  at  the  cost  of  many, — the  putting  into  Master  Wackford  the  fatness  of  twenty, 
or  twenty  thousand.  So  far  as  that  goes,  the  Ibn  Su-u'd  dynasty  also  might  perhaps 
be  included  in  the  same  category.  But  in  one  highly  important  respect,  as  must  be 
familiar  to  many  of  our  readers,  that  was  sui generis.  Not  only  because  of  its  exten- 
sion ;  at  its  best  it  reached  from  shore  to  shore,  and  a  Su-u'd  was  able  to  dictate  to 
the  Porte  the  terms  on  which  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca  would  be  permitted.  Not 
even  because  of  its  intensely  national  character ;  the  central  provinces  of  A'ridh, 
Ya-ma-ma,  and  Sa-dir  produce  the  flower  of  the  Arab  race.  To  understand  what 
the  Najdian  empire  was,  its  other  epithet  of  Wahabite  needs  recalling.  How 
the  Islamic   new-birth  termed  Wahabyism  was  developed  :    how  the  author  of  it 


1  That  is,  from  helmet.  Compare  Ezek.  xxix.  18. 
In  the  Abyssinian  expedition  the  writer,  from  wearing 
every  day  and  all  day  an  unventilated  helmet,  turned 
partially  bald — a  hint  for  young  soldiers. 

^  This  refers  to  the  Arabs'  insistence  on  blood  for 
blood.  So  powerful  was  the  speaker's  tribe,  that 
those  who  had  vengeance  to  wreak  against  them  were 
fain  to  accept  the  blood  wit,  instead  of  carrying  on 
the  feud. 

2  Thus  Mr  Doughty  :  "  I  have  never  heard  any 
one  speak  against  the  Emir's  true  administration 
of  justice.     When  I    asked  if  there  were  no  hand- 


ling of  bribes  at  Ha-yil  by  those  who  are  near  the 
Prince's  ear,  ...  a  tale  was  told  me  of  one  who 
brought  a  bribe  to  advance  his  cause  at  Ha-yil ;  and 
when  his  matter  was  about  to  be  examined  he  privately 
put  ten  reals  into  the  Kadhi's  (judge's)  hand.  But  the 
Kadhi  rising  with  his  stick  laid  load  upon  the  guilty 
Bedouin's  shoulders  until  he  was  weary  ;  and  then  he 
led  him  over  to  the  Prince,  sitting  in  his  stall,  who 
gave  him  many  more  blows  himself,  and  commanded 
his  slaves  to  beat  him." — {Op.  cit.  in  Catalog".  No.  2, 
vol.  i.  p.  607.) 


44  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

— himself  but  a  scholar  and  preacher — made  kings  and  warriors  repeat  its  stern 
negations  and  advance  its  banners,  will  be  glanced  at  when  we  come  to  speak 
in  another  chapter  of  the  Bedouin.  Here  this  passing  reference  is  merely  to 
the  essential  difference  between  a  religious  kingdom  of  that  description  and  the 
purely  secular  edifice  of  the  Ibn  Ra-shids,  founded  on  the  Kur-an  but  slightly; 
on  fanaticism  and  orthodoxy  not  at  all ;  on  dollars,  Martini  Henrys,  and  personal 
force  of  character  chiefly.  At  Ha-yil  all  is  compromise.  Toleration  and  the  pro- 
motion of  free  coming  and  going  is  the  key-stone  :  yet  even  Wahabyism  is  not 
utterly  broken  with.  The  Ottoman  Government  also  has  to  be  humoured.  No 
such  burning  deserts  intervene  between  Baghdad  and  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  as  those 
defending  the  southern  capital ;  in  one  of  which  a  whole  Egyptian  army  died  of 
thirst.  A  Turkish  division  marching  from  Na-jaf  would  pitch  its  tents  before 
Hi-yil  in  less  than  a  month  ;  and  although  the  town  is  fortified,  shelling  would 
astonish  it.  To  avert  such  unpleasantnesses  the  A-mir  has  no  objections  to  call 
the  Sultan  Master,  and  even  pray  for  him,  provided  it  pass  no  further.  A  see-saw 
goes  on  between  them  in  respect  of  making  use  of  one  another.  The  "successor 
of  the  Caliphs"  hates  the  Wa-ha-bis  ;  by  whom  "Turks  and  infidels"  are  classed 
together :  but  he  sees  the  advantages  of  having  his  rough  work  in  Central 
Arabia  done  for  him  by  a  policeman  of  Muhammad's  calibre.  So  also  does  it 
please  the  other  to  maul  his  rivals  in  the  Sultan's  name.  After  every  feat  of 
free-fighting  he  writes  a  letter  to  the  nearest  Turkish  governor,  describing  himself 
effusively  as  the  Sultan's  servant.  This  adroit  foreign  policy  is  played  by  him 
as  much  as  possible  over  the  head  of  his  tribal  following.  If  he  were  to  show  it 
too  much,  for  instance,  by  letting  himself  be  dubbed  a  Pasha,  half  of  his  strength 
would  fall  from  him.  The  shadowy  claim  indulged  in  by  the  Sultan  of  Riim,  in 
virtue  of  an  alleged  inheritance  from  the  Arabian  Caliphs  to  sovereignty  over  all 
Arabia,  counts  for  nothing  with  the  "  nation  that  is  at  ease,  that  dwelleth  with- 
out care  ;  which  have  neither  gates  nor  bars,  which  dwell  alone."  ^  So  opposite 
is  the  effect  of  titles  of  honour  in  natural  and  artificial  bodies  respectively,  that 
the  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  chief  would  take  less  harm  from  a  series  of  checks  in 
ghaz-tt  than  from  putting  on  a  Constantinople  robe  and  ribbon.  Without  dwell- 
ing further  on  the  contrast  between  this  composite  northern  structure  and  the 
severely  simple  Najdian  monolith  to  the  south  of  it,  let  us  note  in  passing  the 
A-mir's  own  full  perception  that  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  is  not  Najd.  The  Blunts  had 
proof  of  this.  When  they  talked  of  going  from  Ha-yil  to  Ar  Ri-adh,  the  A-mir 
"  made  rather  a  face  at  the  suCTgrestion,  and  eave  such  an  alarmino-  account  of 
what  would  there  happen  "  to  them,  that  they  thought  it  wiser  not  to  attempt  it.^ 

^  Jer.  xlix.  31  :  Revis.  Vers.  |  2  Qp_  ^it_  ;„  Catalog.  No.  12,  vol.  i.  p.  254. 


CHAP.  III.  PENINSULAR   ARABIA.  45 

Even  the  Diogenes-tempered  Doughty,  though  he  visited  many  parts  of  Najd, 
did  not  venture  to  approacli  the  dangerous  centre  of  Reformed  Islamism.^  In 
one  respect  if  in  no  other,  Ha-yil  may  be  considered  now  to  fill  the  place  of 
Ar  Ri-adh.  Partly  because  he  is  an  Arab,  partly  to  mount  himself  and  his  paladins 
in  foray,  its  A-mir  has  a  stud  of  horses  rivalling  Solomon's.  Doughty  says  of 
him  that  he 

"  is  a  rich  cattle-master  ;  so  that,  if  you  will  believe  them,  he  possesses  forty  thousand  camels. 
His  stud  is  of  good  Najd  blood  ;  and  as  A'li  'el  Ayid  told  me  (an  honest  man  and  my  neigh- 
bour, who  was  beforetime  in  the  stud  service — he  had  conducted  horses  for  the  former  Amirs 
to  the  Pashas  of  Egypt),  some  300  mares  and  100  horses  with  many  foals  and  fillies. 
After  others'  telling,  Ibnu  Rashid  has  400  free  and  bond  soldiery  ;  200  mares  of  the  blood  ; 
100  horses:  they  are  herded  apart  in  the  deserts,  and  he  has  lOO  bond-servants  (living 
with  their  families  in  booths  of  hair-cloth  as  the  nomads)  to  keep  them.  Another  told  me 
the  Amir's  stud  is  divided  in  troops  of  50  or  60— all  mares,  or  all  horses,  together  :  the 
foals  and  fillies,  after  the  weaning,  are  herded  likewise  by  themselves.  The  troops  are  dis- 
persed in  the  wilderness,  now  here  now  there,  near  or  far  off,  according  to  the  yearly  springing 
of  the  wild  herbage.  The  Amir's  horses  are  grazed  in  nomad  wise  ;  the  fore-feet  hopshackled, 
they  are  dismissed  to  range  from  the  morning.  Barley  or  other  grain  they  taste  not  ;  they  are 
led  home  to  the  booths  and  tethered  at  evening  ;  and  drink  the  night's  milk  of  the  she-camel 
their  foster-mother.  So  that  it  may  seem  the  West  Najd  prince  possesses  horses  and  camels 
to  the  value  of  about  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  pounds  sterling,  and  that  it  has  been  gotten  in 
two  generations  of  the  spoil  of  the  poor  Bedouin." 

Not  a  doubt  of  it ;  and  many  a  curse  is  on  his  head  for  it.  Sa'-di  says  that  ten 
dervises  can  sleep  on  one  blanket,  and  two  emperors  cannot  be  contained  in  one 
continent.  And  the  nomad  needs  as  ample  elbow-room.  Fertile  of  rulers  as  is  the 
Arab  blood,  the  spread  of  big  Governments  affects  the  martial  clans  of  Najd  much 
as  that  of  drainage  and  cultivation  does  certain  classes  of  animals.  Turkish  rule 
reaches  them  only  here  and  there.  In  the  Porte's  Asiatic  provinces,  the  problem  of 
the  submission  of  superior  races  to  an  inferior  one  has  its  solution  partly  in  the 
looseness  with  which  the  Osmanli  sit.  Inside  of  flag- towns,  were  it  not  for  the 
power  of  a  gift  over  them,  the  Government  establishments  would  be  intolerable  :  for 
the  surrounding  country  they  form  little  more  than  a  Sultan's  sign-board.  If  Turkey 
had  it  in  her  to  hold  her  Asiatic  provinces  as  rigidly  as  England  holds  her  Indian 
empire,  the  end  would  soon  come.  But  a  rdgime  like  A-mir  Muhammad's  is  another 
matter.      Rooted  firmly  in  Arab  soil,  and  everywhere  interlacing  with  the  noblesse 

^  "Persecution,"  says  Hallam, "is  the  deadly origi-  rather  have  been  said,  is  the  "original"  (if  by  that  be 

nal  sin  of  the  Reformed  Churches."     But  why  of  the  meant  besetting)  "  sin  "  of  Pharisee,  Wa-ha-bi,  Papist, 

'''■  Reformed''^  only?     If  "Reformed"  Christianity  ap-  Puritan — all  who  have  not  discovered  that  no  mortal 

proved  of  Geneva's  burning  Servetus  for  "  heresy,"  man   can   possibly  make   certain   that   he   and   they 

had    not   Roman    Christianity   also    its    Inquisition  ?  who   think  with   him   are  right  in  their  beliefs  and 

Tolerance  is  easy  to  a  Gallio  :  persecution,  it  should  conclusions. 


46 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


of  the  desert,  this  puts  the  hook  in  the  nose  of  all  Bedouin  who  can  neither  defy 
nor  escape  it.  As  for  defiance,  the  A-mir's  imported  cannon  and  ordered  troops  of 
horse  and  camel-riders  raise  him  in  Arab  eyes  to  the  rank  of  a  "  Government."  Yet 
may  a  pebble  bring-  down  a  giant :  eloquence  especially  is  still  a  power  in  the  prac- 
tical politics  of  the  desert ;  combinations  kept  together  by  the  spear  admit  of  being 
broken  up  by  the  tongue.  Islamism,  as  long  as  it  lasts,  will  infold  within  it  the 
seeds  of  Wahabyism  ;  and  out  of  the  latter  there  may  come  again,  what  has  come 
before,  empire ;  though  the  likelihood  of  it  decreases  with  every  year  of  the 
world's  growth.  Apart  from  life's  natural  period,  a  stroke  of  the  Najdian  kid-dd- 
mi-ya}  or  crooked  girdle-knife,  may  any  day  remove  the  A-mir.  It  has  been  seen 
how  his  stock  was  extirpated  by  him.  As  if  in  punishment  and  reprobation,  the 
first  craving  of  every  man's  heart — a  son — has  been  denied  to  him  :  his  house's 
interminable  list  of  deaths  and  marriages  has  never  had  a  birth  inscribed  in  it. 
Whether,  when  death  claims  him,  another  like  him  will  step  out,  or  all  this  Ja-bal 
Sham-mar  pageant  will  dissolve  and  leave  not  a  wrack  behind,  is  a  question  often 
mooted  by  lovers  of  the  wild  ways  of  the  desert,  the  "  simple  blessings  "  of  Bedouin. 
Meanwhile,  happily  for  the  true  nomad,  there  are 

"  Hills  beyond  Pentland,  and  lands  beyond  Forth,"  ^ — 

spaces  in  which  every  freeman  is  still  the  other's  equal,  and  the  brisk  desert  air 
contains  no  germs  of  kingship.  Not  the  Osmanli,  not  the  Wa-ha-bi,  least  of  all 
the  Ha-yil  princeling,  will  ever  make  a  Pax  Arabica  resembling  the  Pax  Bri- 
tannica.  We  know  of  no  large  portion  of  the  East,  except,  perhaps,  British  India, 
in  which  the  "  cankers  of  a  calm  world  "  are  among  the  dangers  to  be  appre- 
hended. In  connection  with  the  A-mir's  stud  of  Arabian  horses,  the  first  thing 
for  the  reader  to  remember  is  Mr  Doughty's  above-quoted  remark,  that  it  has  been 
collected  in  two  generations  from  the  Bedouin  proper.  Not  content  with  taking 
the  mares  of  the  Ae-ni-za  and  others  from  them  in  foray,  he  is  always  on  the 
watch  to  buy.  One  day,  perhaps,  in  Damascus  or  Aleppo  coffee-houses  the  talk  is 
all  of  some  superior  colt  growing  up  in  this  tribe  or  that.  And  then,  before  any- 
thing can  be  done  about  him,  the  news  comes  in  that  he  has  been  bought  for  Ibn 
Ra-shid.  All  the  Sham-mar,  wherever  distributed,  are  eager  to  serve  him  ;  every 
now  and  then  a  stalwart  African  or  other  messenger  passes  through  Baghdad,  taking 
to  him  two  or  three  colts  or  fillies  from  far-away  pastures.  Not  in  the  imperial 
stables  at  Constantinople,  or  in  any  other  one  place  in  the  world  probably,  may 


1  So  called  because  worn  towards  front  of  girdle. 
In  other  districts,  where  worn  more  on  one  side,  it  is 
called  jam-M-ya,  or  "  side-arms."  A  third  name  is 
shib-ri-ya,  lit.  span-lengthj  like  "  yard  of  clay  "  for  a 


tobacco-pipe.     In  Arab  hands  two  bites  of  a  cherry 
are  seldom  made  by  it. 

^  Scott,  in  Doom  of  Devorgoil,  Act  ii.  sc.  2. 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR   ARABIA. 


47 


modern  traveller  feast  his  eyes  on  so  many  picked  Arabians  as  in  his  enclosures 
and  pastures.      His  own  favourite  mares, 

"  In  shape  and  gesture  proudly  eminent,"  ^ 

are  the  flower  of  the  desert.  Outside  of  these  are  high  -  class  colts  and  fillies, 
designed  for  presentation  to  majesties.  Then  we  reach  the  commoner  brands, 
whether  home-bred  or  ghas-n-t^k&n  ;  yielding  the  lots  sent  annually  to  the  Indian 
market,  likewise  animals  to  serve  as  presents  —  only  another  form  of  selling — 
to  Pashas,  visitors,  and  inferiors.  Proverbially,  when  the  Arab  gives  a  cat, 
he  expects  a  she-camel.  Not  to  speak  of  the  romantic  figures  of  antiquity, 
even  princes  seldom  bestow  gifts  for  nothing :  in  ten  years  we  have  seen 
numbers  of  these  Ha-yil  gift-horses  in  the  stables  of  Baghdad  officials ;  their 
quality  graduated  according  to  the  A-mir's  idea  of  what  each  several  recipient's 
friendship  was  worth  to  him.  Pilgrims  of  condition  returning  through  his 
country  from  Mecca  do  not  approach  him  empty-handed.  An  ancient  Indian 
dame  resident  since  the  annexation  of  Oudh  at  Kar-ba-la  once  showed  us  a 
very  common  mare  and  filly  which  had  been  given  to  her  by  the  A-mir,  as  a  return 
present  for  a  Georgian  beauty  bought  by  her  for  him  in  the  "  Holy  City."  ^  The 
bestowal  of  a  first-class  horse  or  mare  on  an  old  Indian  woman  would  seem  to  every 
Arab  contrary  to  nature ;  so  that  the  inferiority  of  the  above,  as  of  certain  other 
specimens  which  we  have  seen  of  the  A-rnir's  presentation  -  horses,  is  noticeable 
merely  as  showing  that  ka-dish-es  may  come  out  of  Hi-yil.  Peninsular  Arabia, 
it  is  true,  does  not  form,  as  the  country  round  Baghdad  does,  a  breeding- 
ground  of  the  animal  last  mentioned.      The  poor  ka-dish  ^  finds  one  of  his  chief 


^  Paradise  Lost,  Bk.  I. 

2  If  anywhere  inland  a  blow  is  to  be  struck  at  the 
transport  hither  and  thither,  for  sale,  of  human  beings, 
it  is  at  Mecca ;  but  so  far,  not  even  a  Consular 
Agent  represents  any  foreign  Power  in  the  chief  town 
of  Al  Hi-jaz.  The  Transcaucasian  kingdom  described 
by  Marco  Polo  in  his  4th  chapter  as  Georgiana  (in 
Persian  Giirj,  et  Gurg-istan),  Christianised  since  our 
fourth  century,  and  now  merged  in  the  "holy  Rus- 
sian empire"  (seat  of  government,  Tiflis),  shares 
with  Circassia  the  distinction  of  supplying  wives 
to  Turkish  harems.  These  are  of  the  Caucasian 
type,  and  in  youth  more  like  boys  than  girls.  A 
bevy  of  them  forming  the  collection  of  a  late  aged 
Indian  resident  of  Baghdad  no  sooner  perceived 
their  master  moribund,  than  they  asserted  their  in- 
dependence Amazon  fashion  ;  each  procuring  for 
herself  a  husband  with  the  ornaments  which  the  old 
man  had  given  to  her !  If,  in  that  instance,  the 
"whirligig  of  time"  righted  a  great  injury,  so  very 
often  Georgians  bought  from  Constantinople  brokers 


receive  an  honourable  and  wifely  status.  In  many 
other  cases,  especially  in  families  of  Pashas,  they  are 
handmaidens  only  ;  till  one  day  Sarah  "  arranges  "  a 
marriage  for  Hagar  ;  and  some  subaltern  officer,  or 
other  candidate,  hopeful  of  the  Pasha's  further  favours, 
plays  bridegroom  to  the  serving-maid. 

^  All  the  rude  hydraulic  gear  included  in  India 
under  the  name  of  moth  {i.e.,  bucket)  is  in  I'rak  a 
kard  (pronounced  chard),  and  in  Central  Arabia 
sa-wa-nl  {q.  v.  in  Index  I.)  A  cross-beam  raised 
above  the  well-mouth  (or  projected  over  the  river) 
with  uprights,  and  supporting  a  wooden  wheel  or 
roller,  forms  the  framework.  Ropes  having  a  huge 
leathern  bag  tied  to  one  end,  and  a  camel,  ass,  or 
pony  harnessed  to  the  other,  pass  over  the  wheel  or 
wheels.  The  plash  of  the  bag  in  the  depths  below 
notifies  to  the  quadraped  that  he  must  put  his  shoulder 
to  it,  repacing  the  descent  which  leads  from  the  brink, 
so  that  the  bucket  shall  tilt  into  a  reservoir  or  channel 
what  portion  of  its  contents  may  not  have  fallen 
back  again  through  its  leaky  places  in  the  process 


48 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


walks  in  life — water-drawing — closed  to  him  in  Arabia  proper.  In  Al  Ha-sa,  as 
seen  above,  springs  and  runnels  serve  the  cultivator;  in  arider  parts  sa-wd-m,  or 
camel-tackle,  not  ka-dish  cJiards,  are  fitted  to  the  wells.  Yet,  for  one  thing,  there  is 
the  pilgrim  route — Turkish,  Persian,  Bohemian,  quite  as  much  as  Arabian.  A  con- 
venient place  as  Ha-yil  may  be  to  go  to,  as  long  as  Muhammad's  state  continues, 
for  those  who  without  much  labour  would  buy,  at  the  A-mir's  prices,  genuine  horses, 
such  have  need  to  be  careful  that  they  take  not  nondescripts,  left  behind  by  Con- 
stantinople Pashas,  Tatar  couriers,  or  Persian  Aghas. 

The  "  flanks  of  Najd  "  having  thus  been  looked  at,  in  a  more  systematic  work 
the  nine  central  provinces  enumerated  above  in  a  footnote  would  next  be  visited. 
But  this  would  prove  interminable ;  and  our  design  does  not  require  it.  Had  it 
been  otherwise,  Najd  proper  would  have  shown  to  us,  here,  continuations  of 
Nu-fiidh  land — the  towering  sides  of  the  valleys  as  sharp  and  sheer,  but  for  torrent 
tracks,  as  if  they  had  been  cloven  out  of  the  limestone  or  sandstone  plateau ;  there, 
elevated,  and  but  slightly  fertile,  champaign-land,  checkered  by  peaked  and  rocky 
mountain-barriers.  In  the  depths  of  the  Nu-fudh,  oasis-hamlets  of  the  ahl  ma-dar^ 
would  have  attracted  us  ;  many  of  them  cultivated  by  families  of  a  horde  or  nation 
the  main  body  of  which  is  nomadic.  In  the  busy  upland  townships,  more  of 
buying  and  selling,  irrigating  and  ploughing,  than  of  horse-breeding  would  have 
been  noticed.  But  enough  for  the  present  of  attempts  at  description.  In  our 
opening  pages,  as  will  be  remembered,  we  saw  how  Najdian  Bedouin  make  shift 
when  pasture  fails.  The  remainder  of  this  chapter  will  be  given  to  considering 
how,  in  the  riverless  peninsula,  they  whose  heritage  is  the  thirsty  desert  contend 
with  the  want  of  water.  The  inhabitants  of  countries  in  which  no  sound  is  more 
familiar  than  that  of  the  falling  rain,  and  clear  streams  are  always  running,  can 
scarcely  realise  the  opposite  conditions,  or  how  natural  they  appear  to  those  who 
are  accustomed  to  them. 

Najdian  ballads  afford  frequent  glimpses  of  how,  in  good  years,  the  land  receives 
its  allotted  share  of  water.  The  masters  of  Arabian  poetry,  in  the  scarcity  equally 
of  animate  and  inanimate  objects  Avhich  the  desert  life  offers,  never  tire  of 
describing  how,  in  winter,  sterile  mountains  bring  down  the  rain  -  clouds  ;  how, 
for  several  days  afterwards,  the  Nu-fudh  below  run  like  rivers,  so  that  plashes 
remain  till  early  summer ;  while  the  main  body  of  the  current,  sinking  underground, 
reissues  in  the  form  of  springs  in  distant  lowlands.     Such  a  sketch  from  Nature  is 


of  ascent.  Such  is  the  force  of  association,  that  the 
undescribable  creak  of  this  rickety  construction,  in 
all  which  there  is  not  a  piece  of  sound  carpentry, 
and  which  needs  mending  daily,  though  it  may 
irritate  the  fretful,  makes  sweet  music  to  those  who 


have  known  what  it  was  to  hear  it  after  spells  of 
desert  travel. 

^  Lit.  mud-folk:  opp.  oi  A/d-wabar,  tent-  (lit.  hair-) 
folk. 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR   ARABIA. 


49 


the  following,  having  for  its  scene  the  palm  oasis  of  Tai-ma,  where,  on  the  west, 
Nu-fudh  land  slopes  into  Al   Hi-jaz  : — 

Comrade,  seest  thou  the  lightning  ?    look  how  it  gleams  !    like  the  flash  of  a  pair  of  hands  amid  the 

turreted  clouds  !  ^ 
Was  yon  its  light  ?  or  the  lamps  of  an  anchoret  -  \yho  has  turned  the  oil  on  the  twisted  wicks  ? 
I  sat  watching  it  [the  cloud]  with  my  companions,  between  Dha-rij  and  Al  U'-dhaib ;  far  away  was  the 

object  of  our  gaze  : 
On  Ka-tan,  I  guess,  the  downpour  of  its  right ;  and  of  its  left,  on  Si-tar  and  Yadh-bul : 
Then  it  poured  out  its  deluge  on  Ku-tai-fa ;  throwing  down  on  their  chins  the  great  trees  of  Ka-han-btxl : 
And  there  passed  over  Ka-nan  of  its  flying  scud;   making  the  mountain -goats  come  down  from  it  by 

every  path : 
And  in  Tai-ma  it  spared  not  the  stem  of  a  single  date-palm  ;  and  not  a  keep  save  those  built  of  stone  : 
[Mount]  Tha-bir,  in  the  first  burst  of  its  rain,  was  like  an  Elder  of  the  people  in  his  striped  cloak  : 
The  top  of  Al  Mu-jai-mir's  head,  in  the  midst  of  the  torrent  and  its  wrack,  looked  in  the  morning  like  the 

whorl  of  a  spindle." 
And  it  [the  rain-cloud]  cast  down  on  the  plain  of  Al  Gha-bit  its  burden  ;  the  alighting  of  a  merchant  of 

Yemen — him  of  the  bales, — the  caravaner. 
In  the  morning,  'twas  as  if  the  singing-birds  of  the  valley  had  sipped  for  their  early  draught  the  first  flow 

of  the  grape's  pure  juice,  mixed  with  spices ;  * 
Thick  at  eve  as  the  roots  of  the   wild-onion,  on  its  [the  torrent's]  distant  margins,  the  beasts  of  prey 

drowned  in  it. 

Nearly  fourteen  hundred  years  have  passed  since  these  verses  of  Im-ru  '1  Kais  ^ 
first  won  the  hearts  of  Arabs.  Here  they  are  used  to  illustrate  the  Najdian 
climate  rather  than  for  ornament :  wherefore  fidelity  to  the  original  is  better  than 
metrical  paraphrase.  But  he  who  would  have  them  in  long  metre  imitating,  with 
variations,  the  original,  will  find  them  so  reproduced,  as  elegantly  as  truly,  in  Mr 
C.  J.  Lyall's  Translations  of  Ancient  Arabian  Poetry.^  Apart  from  views  of 
inanimate  nature,  the  poem  which  contains  them,  consisting  of  some  eighty 
couplets,  descriptive,  lyrical,  and  rhetorical,  sets  us  down  in  the  midst  of  the  old 
life  of  Arabia,  much  as  Burns's  poems  do  in  the  kirks  and  farm-houses  of  western 


'  A  simile  perhaps  referable  to  the  great  natural, 

or  unnatural,  order  of  "  conceits "  ;  yet   the  reverse 

of  whimsical  for  Arabs,  in  whose  discourse  the  hands 

move  as  rapidly  as  the  tongue.      La-bid  says,  in  a 

poem  contained  in  the  Vienna  edition  of  his  Di-wan — 

As  if  in  the  tops  of  the  clouds,  tliere  were  women  clapping 
their  hands. 

-  V.  Index  I.,  art.  Der. 

^  The  above  place-names,  except  Gha-bit  and  Mu- 
jai-mir,  belong  to  mountains  bounding  the  view  from 
the  only  slightly  elevated  site  of  Tai-ma.  Camels 
are  still  unloaded  in  the  hollow  of  Gha-bit ;  the  land- 
mark of  which  is  the  low  hill  (perhaps  only  cairn)  of 
Mu-jai-mir.  The  likening  of  the  top  of  this,  standing 
out  amid  the  drift,  to  the  notched  "whorl"  of  the  Arab 
spindle  showing  through  a  coil  of  twisted  wool — "  met- 


aphor with  a  surprise"  of  Aristotle — like  the  compari- 
son in  Canticles  of  a  black  beauty  with  the  "  tents  of 
Kedar," — fulfils  at  least  one  poetic  canon,  adaptation 
to  the  audience.  In  Persia  it  is  proverbial  that  the 
wise  man  who  is  seated  with  Maj-nfin  speaks  to  him 
of  no  other  subject  than  Laila's  beauty. 

■•  "  I  would  cause  thee  to  drink  of  spiced  wine." — 
Cant.  viii.  3.  A  well  -  annotated  collection  of  the 
parallelisms,  not  in  allusion  only  but  in  colouring 
and  texture,  occurring  in  "  the  choicest  of  the  songs 
of  Solomon  "  and  the  earliest  known  Arabian  poems 
respectively,  might  prove  useful  to  students  of  the 
former. 

°  V.  Index  I.,  art.  Im-ru  'l  Yi\\%  (more  classically, 
Im-ra-u  '1  Kais). 

•^  Williams  &  Norgate  :  1885. 


so  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

Scotland  a  century  ago.  Im-ru  '1  Kais's  period  was  before  Muhammad's;  and  he 
lived  and  died  a  pagan.  Having  it  in  view,  in  another  chapter,  to  cull  from  his 
ballad  a  further  passage  illustrative  of  a  different  subject,  we  may  here  observe  that 
in  his  case  the  "blind  minstrel"  myth  or  theory  is  happily  excluded.  Not  his 
laurel  wreath  only,  but  much  of  his  personal  history  has  been  preserved.  Authentic 
records  describe  him  as  a  prince  of  Kin-da ;  a  fifth-century  offshoot  from  the 
Yemen  empire.  He  seems  to  have  made  as  much  noise  in  his  time  with  his 
exploits  of  war  and  adventure  as  with  his  compositions ;  and  to  have  been  the  hero, 
and  not  merely  maker  and  reciter,  of  his  pieces.  The  name  Ma-liHv  'dh  dha-lil 
which  has  come  down  with  him,  when  rendered  Wandering  King,  has  been 
taken  as  showing  that  even  in  the  days  of  Arabia's  fullest  licence  he  was  famed 
for  "roving."  His  own  accounts  of  himself  in  his  poem  fit  this  view  perfectly;  but 
other  stories  have  it  that  his  loves  were  not  returned.  At  any  rate,  his  above-quoted 
title  takes  other  meanings  more  naturally.  But  to  revert  to  physical  feature.  No 
account  of  passing  deluges,  especially  in  districts  which  receive  some  of  the  rain 
brought  up  by  the  S.W.  monsoon  from  the  Indian  Ocean,  should  obscure  the  view  of 
Najdian  aridity  already  given.  Towns,  of  course,  maybe  omitted;  every  permanent 
settlement  of  human  beinsfs  has  for  its  first  essential  a  well  or  river.  Neither  need 
we  recur  to  areas  "as  empty,"  to  use  an  Arab  figure,  "as  the  belly  of  an  ass." 
Apart  from  these,  and  speaking  of  its  Bedouin  -  tenanted  spaces,  some  of  them 
representing  three  or  four  hundred  miles  of  surface,  the  Arab  peninsula,  it  may 
be  here  repeated,  has  want  of  water  for  the  most  potent  cause  of  its  peculiarities. 
In  the  Kur-an  it  is  said.  We  [God]  gave  life  to  everything  by  means  of  water .-"^ 
and  the  changes  which  would  follow  in  middle  Arabia  from  artificial  watering- 
may  perhaps  be  destined  in  the  remote  future  to  yield  another  illustration  of  it. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Bedouin  do  not  think  of  this  ;  for,  as  seen  already,  the 
irrigation  of  their  deserts  would  mean  for  them  a  notice  to  quit.  But  considering 
the  deficiency,  as  well  as  the  irregular  seasonal  ^  distribution,  of  their  rainfall,  their 
making  not  the  smallest  attempt  to  store  it  says  little  for  their  understandings. 
Or  rather  perhaps  it  is  that,  expecting  in  their  dim  natural  religion  to  have  every- 
thing done  for  them  by  Allah,  their  active  energies  run  only  in  the  narrowest 
traditional  grooves.  In  other  ways,  also,  this  extreme  dryness  tends  to  stereotype 
the  conditions  favouring  it.  A  country  thus  sealed  against  all  mankind  save 
Bad-US,  and  all  transport  save  camels,  is  harder  even  than  Afghan-istan  for 
"openers"  to  enter;   harder  still  to  retire  from;   hardest  of  all   to  retain.      Pelly 


fa-rl,  "  fall  of  the  year,"  between  moderating  of  the 
heat  and  setting  in  of  cold,  or  cool ;    lastly  Shi-td, 


1  S.  xxi. 

2  With  Bedouin  the  seasons  are  :  Ra-bi,  or  spring  ; 
KaidJi,  time  of  greatest  heat,  from  (auroral)  rising  of     j     our  winter  :  each  three  months, 
Pleiades  to  appearance  of  Sn-hail,  or  Canopus  ;  Sa- 


CHAP.  III.  .        PENINSULAR  ARABIA.  .51 

and  other  explorers  mention  having  seen  the  remains  of  ancient  aqueducts  in  the 
hills  of  Najd ;  but  it  is  not  known  whose  works  they  were.  The  Wahabite 
empire  at  all  events  cannot  be  credited  with  them.  Instead  of  repairing  the  old 
reservoirs  and  conduits,  the  Ibn  Su-uds  demolished  them  further.  The  reason 
given  for  this,  it  is  curious  to  notice,  corresponds  with  that  alleged  by  certain 
religious  oddities  long  ago  in  our  country,  against  all  contrivances  designed  to  pro- 
duce artificially  benefits  which  God  does  not  bestow  spontaneously !  For  common 
use  this  argument  may  have  answered  ;  but  any  one  can  understand  an  A-mir  of 
Najd  having  the  same  objection  to  large-scale  irrigation  which  we  islanders  have  to 
a  Thames  tunnel.  Here  it  is  needless  to  dwell  too  much  on  the  years,  or  succes- 
sions of  years,  of  water-famine  which  periodically  smite  Arabia  ;  when,  except  perhaps 
within  the  border  of  the  monsoon,  not  a  shower  falls.  Then,  truly,  the  nomad's 
lot  is  cruel.  All  the  associations  of  wooing,  feasting,  and  fighting  which  endear 
to  him  the  name  of  Spring  vanish  out  of  his  life.  No  filling  of  the  watering-places ; 
no  clothing  of  his  Nu-fudh  with  white-headed  mi-si,  most  nutritious  of  herbage ;  no 
milk-flow ;  no  wandering  forth  with  his  flocks  and  herds  over  fragrant  pastures. 
The  while  the  stricken  tribesmen  scatter  in  search  of  grass,  or  gather  round  any 
grimy  pits  or  sand-pools  in  which  a  little  water  thick  with  drift  and  camel-ordure 
may  have  stagnated,  a  great  mortality  sets  in — greater  than  one  may  often  see 
among  sheep  in  Scotland  in  severe  winters.  The  mares  perish  first ;  then  the 
small  cattle ;  at  last  the  camels.  The  children  are  given  away  to  any  one  who 
will  take  them — thrown,  as  it  were,  on  Providence  :  a  better  way,  very  likely,  than 
collecting  them  in  parochial  "farms"  and  workhouses.^  Not  only  in  Arabia,  but  in 
every  other  country  where  horse-breeding  is  still  on  primitive  lines,  hard  times 
similarly  come  to  stock-masters.  In  Australia  and  southern  Africa,  droughts  and 
murrains  every  ten  or  twenty  years  thin  the  horse-runs.  In  Najd,  the  speciality 
is  the  scarcity  every  year,  and,  more  or  less,  all  the  year,  of  the  pure  element. 
Mr  Doughty  thus  sets  down  his  experiences  in  western  Arabia,  in  the  tents  of 
the  Ae-ni-za ;  not  in  late  summer,  when  the  water-supply  falls  to  zero,  but  in  the 
early  spring,  when  it  is  at  its  best  : — 

"  Sweet  and  light  in  these  high  deserts  is  the  incorrupt  air,  but  the  water  is  scant  and 
infected  with  camel-urine.  Hirfa  [wife  of  his  nomad  host]  doled  out  to  me  at  Zeyd's 
commandment  hardly  an  ounce  or  two  of  the  precious  water  every  morning,  that  I  might 
wash  '  as  the  towns-people.'  She  thought  it  unthrift  to  pour  out  water  thus  when  all 
day  the  thirsty  tribesmen  have  not  enough  to  drink.  Many  times  between  their  waterings 
there   is   not   a   pint   of  water   left    in   the   greatest    Shekh's  tents  ;    and   when   the  goodman 


^  In  towns  of  Arabs,  the  newly  born  infant  whose     |     of  a  mosque  towards  morning  prayer-call ;  so  that  the 
mother  may  not  own  or  rear  it  is  left  on  the  threshold     |     first  comer  may  take  pity  on  it,  and  adopt  it. 


52 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


bids  his  housewife   fill   the  bowl   to   make  his  guests'  coffee,  it  is  answered  from   their  side, 
'  We  have  no  water.'  "  ^ 

Another  traveller,  the  Italian,  or  Levantine,  Guarmani,-  who  in  1863  went 
over  the  peninsula  buying  horses,  has  it  in  his  journal  that  among  the  pariah 
hordes  of  the  Sha-ra-rat,  referred  to  by  us  already  '^  as  having  Wa-di  Sir-han  and 
the  country  between  Al  Jauf  and  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  for  their  di-ras,  he  heard 
old  men  declare  that  they  had  never  tasted  water  in  their  lives !  If  it  had  been 
in  Europe,  this  would  not  have  sounded  so  incredible.  He  might  have  met 
the  very  man  of  whom  the  story  goes,  that  once  he  undertook,  for  a  wager, 
to  tell,  blindfolded,  the  name  of  every  liquor  offered  to  him ;  which  he  did 
successfully,  till  there  was  put  in  his  hand  a  glass  of  "Adam's  ale" — a  tap 
so  strange  to  him  that  he  had  to  own  himself  defeated,  and  pay  up !  But 
we  have  never  seen  or  heard  of  a  wine-skin  in  tent  of  true  nomadic  Arab. 
Arabia  is  no  exception  to  the  statement  that  all  countries  have  contrived  the 
means  of  intoxication.  It  is  told  in  Genesis  how  the  "  mocker  "  obtained  pos- 
session of  Noah.^  That — and  the  connection  is  significant — occurs  in  one  and 
the  same  passage  with  the  intimation  that  the  patriarch  "  began  to  be  a 
husbandman"  {i.e.,  a  ha-dha-ri),  "and  he  planted  a  vineyard."  It  is  also  re- 
markable that  when  Abram,  or  Abraham  —  for  Arabs  the  type  of  Bedouin 
manners — entertained  the  three  heavenly  visitors,^  he  set  bread  and  flesh,  butter 
and  milk,  but  not  wine,  before  them.  Still  more  strikingly,  we  read  in  Jer.  xxxv. 
of  "  the  whole  house,"  or  clan,  of  the  sons  of  Rechab  refusing  to  drink  wine  ; 
not,  like  the  Nazarites  (Num.  vi.  2-8),  under  a  self-dedicatory  vow  volun- 
tarily assumed  by  individuals,  but  to  preserve  the  rule  of  life  coming  down  to 
them  through  the  ages  from  their  eponymous  Shekh  or  "  father,"  Rechab.^ 
Even  if  the  inference  were  to  be  drawn  from  these  and  other  indications  that 
the  disseverance  to  this  day  of  Bad-u  land  from  the  all  but  universal  realm  of 
Bacchus  is  of  twin  growth  with  the  nomadic  system,  to  our  thinking  many 
a  lamer  conclusion  has  been  supported.  The  surface  explanation,  lack  of  means, 
may  at  all  events  be  rejected  :  the  Bad-u  no  more  cultivates  the  tobacco-plant 
than  the  vine ;  yet  it  will  be  seen  in  another  chapter  that  his  pipe  Is  seldom 
out.  Nor  does  Islamism  offer  a  solution.  Certainly  Muhammad  must  be  re- 
garded as  the  founder  of  the  greatest  total  abstinence  league  in  history ;  but 
it  will  appear  elsewhere  how  indifferent  the  wandering  Arabs  are  to  Kuranic 
ordinance,  except  where  it  is  drilled  into  them  by  Turks  or  Wahabis.  In 
the     "Days    of     Ignorance,"''     fermented    juice     from     Syrian     vineyards,     with 


^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  2,  vol.  i.  p.  21 8. 
2  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  27,  p.  218. 
2  K  p.  15,  ante. 


ix.  20,  23.     Et  V.  Gen.  xliii.  34. 


^  Gen.  xviii.  1-8.  °   V.  in  Index  I.,  art.  Ri-kab. 

'  Name  given  by  Muslim  to  all  the  ante-Islamitic 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR  ARABIA. 


S3 


stronger  date  -  spirits,  washed  down  the  boiled  mutton  and  camels'  flesh  at 
feasts  of  ha-dha-rt  warriors  and  hunters.  At  the  religious  fairs  of  pagan  Arabia, 
the  Bedouin  must  have  witnessed,  probably  even  experienced,  all  the  phantas- 
magoric symptoms  of  inebriation,  from  the  first  disturbance  of  the  faculties,  to 
the  dead-drimk  condition.  But  speaking  of  the  central  bodies  of  the  nomad 
Arabs,  we  are  mistaken  if  all  this  did  not  deepen  in  them  their  love  of  their 
own  mode  of  life.^  Some  would  have  it  that  these  things  follow  race  ;  that  the 
Arab  inclines  to  sobriety  as  naturally  as  the  Teuton,  from  Tacitus'  time  down- 
ward, does  to  free  drinking ;  and  that  the  notion  of  Muhammad's  sermonisings 
having  in  this  respect  changed  his  countrymen  is  due  to  references  to  wine 
and  wassail  in  the  pre-Islamic  poetry  being  too  much  taken  au  sdrieux.  But 
we  demur  to  this.  If  the  praises  of  wine  may  be  sung  by  bards  whose  bever- 
age is  water,  such  effusions  presuppose  at  least  a  sympathetic  audience.  Let  the 
finest  thing  of  this  kind  in  European  literature  be  put  out,  in  Arab  dress,  in  Najd, 
and  no  one  would  listen  to  it,  any  more  than  Englishmen  would  to  verses  going 
over  the  points  of  a  riding-camel.  Moreover,  it  was  not  all  at  once  that  Muham- 
mad saw  the  necessity  of  making  the  rule  against  strong  drink  absolute.  In  one 
passage  of  the  Kur-an,  the  fruits  of  the  palm  and  vine,  and  the  saccharine  fermen- 
tations obtained  from  them,  are  cited  as  proofs  of  God's  goodness ;  ^  in  another, 
rivers  of  zvine  are  included  in  heaven's  charms.®  Further,  and  more  conclusive  even 
than  the  early  poetry  on  the  point  of  old  Arabian  manners,  might  be  quoted  the 


ages.  Next  to  our  own,  no  era  ever  set  out  with  a 
more  epoch-making  incident  than  that  dating  from 
Muhammad's  Fhght  to  Medina  (June  20th,  a.d.  622). 
In  a  few  years  almost  every  feature  of  Arabian  civil- 
isation and  town-life  was  altered  by  it.  Arabian 
annalists  have  taken  full  advantage  of  the  marked 
division  in  the  national  history  which  is  thus  pre- 
sented, to  crowd  into  the  later  period  all  the  lights, 
into  the  earlier  all  the  shadows.  This  may  pass 
from  the  religious  standpoint,  but  not  from  the 
secular  :  witness  the  greatness,  both  politically  and 
commercially,  of  the  old  Sabsan  and  Minasan  Arab 
sovereignties. 

1  Here  an  objection  may  be  anticipated.  Further 
on  it  will  be  illustrated  how  full  the  legendary  and 
poetic  lore  of  Arabs  is  of  drinking-bouts.  Such 
passages  may  seem  to  support  the  inference  that  the 
Bedouin  before  Muhammad  were  always  ready  for  a 
revel  when  a  travelling  merchant  came  round  with 
wine,  and  they  had  the  means  to  purchase.  But, 
first,  it  is  impossible  to  determine  how  far  these 
descriptions  referred  to  Bad-us  proper.  The  Arabian 
"makers"  whose  verses  have  come  down,  whatever 
they  may  have  been  by  blood,  were  not  Bedouin  by 


habit.  It  is  idle  looking  for  primitive  manners  in 
or  near  the  seats  of  centralised  governments.  But 
the  question  is,  If  in  prehistoric  times  the  genuine 
Bedouin  drank  wine  when  they  could  get  it,  when 
and  wherefore  did  they  cast  off  this  propensity? 
Apart  from  the  operation  of  adequate  causes,  nations 
do  not  reverse  their  social  customs.  In  countries 
partly  tenanted  by  Arabs,  wherever  we  have  travelled 
with  baggage-mules,  we  have  been  much  applied  to 
for  brandy,  by  Osmanh  military  officers  and  others, 
but  never  by  Bedouin.  The  passages  of  the  old 
poetry  which  go  round  in  desert  circles  are  not  those 
about  the  wine -jar,  but  those  introducing  the  bint 
(maiden)  and  ghas-u;  mare  and  camel.  We  ha\-e 
never  seen  signs  even  in  the  Bedouin  who  approach 
Baghdad  and  Mosul,  that  the  tradition  of  Jonadab 
the  son  of  Rechab  is  observed  by  them  only  in  the 
presence  of  strangers.  But  even  supposing  some  of 
them  to  love  the  bottle  secretly,  why  secretly,  seeing 
that  they  do  not  profess  Islamism? 

^  Sfi-ra  xvi.  :  word  used  for  wine,  Sa-KAR,  g.  v.  in 
Index  I. 

^  S.  xlvii.  :  word  used  for  wine,  Khamr,  q.  v.  in 
Index  I. 


54 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


injunction,  put  out  doubtless  on  some  special  occasion,  against  the  coining  to  prayer 
in  a  state  of  intoxication}  Not  till  later  did  it  reveal  itself  to  the  Reformer  that 
rules  of  moderation,  however  sufficient  for  well-off  people,  are  but  ropes  of  sand 
for  the  classes  who  take  to  drink  not  from  the  love  of  it,  but  because  a 
dram  is  easier  come  by  than  clothes  for  the  back  or  food  for  the  belly.  And 
after  that  there  was  no  more  parleying.  In  utterance  upon  utterance  wine  was 
condemned  unreservedly.  One  text  declares  heinous  sin  to  be  in  it :  another  ranks 
it  with  abominations  proceeding  from  Satan ;  .  .  .  one  of  the  Tempter  s  means  of 
sowing  enmity  and  hatred,  and  turning  men  aside  from  the  remembi^ance  and 
worship  of  God?  Here  we  cannot  occupy  ourselves  with  the  question  of  whether 
this  rule  of  total  abstinence,  in  so  far  as  adhered  to,  has  in  a  thousand  years  and 
more  acted  beneficially,  or  the  opposite,  on  the  Arab  race,  and  on  all  the  peoples 
which  have  received  Islamism.  Authorities  are  not  wanting  for  the  view  that  "  a 
national  love  for  strong  drink  is  a  characteristic  of  the  nobler  and  more  energetic 
populations  of  the  world  ; "  that  "  it  accompanies  public  and  private  enterprise,  con- 
stancy of  purpose,  liberality  of  thought,  and  aptitude  for  war."  ^  If,  instead  of  a 
Muhammad,  a  Bass  or  an  Exshaw  ■*  had  come  to  Arabia,  perhaps  the  qualities  which 


^  S.  iv.  :  word  used  for  intoxicated,  sti-kd-rd,  pi.  of 
sak-rdn,  v.  Index  I.,  art.  Sa-KAR. 

2  Kur-an  :  S.  ii.  et  v.  Three  other  usages  of  old 
Arabian  life  are  pilloried  with  wine  in  the  above 
quoted  "revelations."  The  first  is  (Al)  IVIai-SIR,  a 
round-game  much  associated  with  pagan  feasts  and 
hospitalities,  in  which  differently  marked  arrows 
formed  the  "  tickets "  or  "  numbers,"  and  hunks  of 
slaughtered  camels  the  stakes.  In  those  early  days 
it  is  doubtful  if  even  chess  {shit-ranj)  was  known  to 
Arabia :  more  probably  it  came  later,  with  cards 
igan-ji-fa),  backgammon  {iia?'d),  draughts  {da-md), 
and  the  rest,  as  the  world  opened  to  her.  Never- 
theless all  such  diversions,  except  perhaps  chess,  are 
held  by  strait-laced  Arab  Muslim  to  stand  tabooed 
by  implication.  Sin  is  in  the  mere  condition  that 
the  winner  shall  receive  from  the  loser:  not,  appa- 
rently, with  much  reference  to  the  effects  of  it  on 
the  latter,  or  to  the  casuistry  of  whether  money  thus 
pocketed  belongs  really  to  its  new,  or  to  its  cjuondam, 
master ;  but  because  of  Muhammad's  condemnation 
oi  Al  Mai-sir.  The  second  prohibited  thing  was  the 
setting  up  of  "  sacred  stones "  (an-sab) ;  as  to  which 
see  in  Index  I.,  art.  Baitu  'llah  :  and  the  third,  the 
having  recourse  to  lots,  like  the  old  Homeric  heroes, 
to  ascertain  what  God  or  fate  had  willed.  In  this 
also  arrows  {az-laiii),  otherwise  white  pebbles,  or 
ossicles  ("  bones ")  formed  the  implements ;  each 
having  its  own  "  message "  or  intimation  marked  on 


it.  It  is  impossible  to  consider  in  a  footnote  what 
effects  Muhammad  produced  at  the  time  and  after- 
wards on  these  several  phases  of  primitive  manners. 
One  of  them,  the  symbolising  of  the  divine  by  the 
erection  of  stones,  received  from  him  unquestion- 
ably a  final  blow.  In  regard  to  the  others,  all  de- 
pends on  the  type  of  Islamism.  Whei'e  that  is  lax 
and  devious,  poets  like  Ha-fiz  extol  the  grape-juice 
as  more  to  be  desired  and  sweeter  than  the  kiss  of 
maidens :  before  a  journey  millions  draw  a  fdl  (omen) 
from  poet's  verses,  as  in  Europe  "pricking  for  texts  " 
is  practised  on  the  Bible  :  from  Indus  and  Oxus  to 
Mediterranean  gambling-  flourishes  among  Muslim. 
Yet  there  are  in  all  those  spaces,  as  well  as  in  India, 
middle  Arabia,  and  Africa,  millions  who  refuse  the 
wine-cup,  not  like  the  Bedouin  merely  on  traditional 
grounds,  but  because  their  Prophet  has  forbidden  it : 
to  whom,  for  the  same  reason,  divination  is  accursed. 
Leaving  the  question  of  the  good  or  evil  of  this,  it 
surely  is  very  remarkable  that  a  growth  of  darkness 
like  divination,  uneradicated  to  this  day  in  Europe, 
should  in  Arabia  have  so  far  yielded  to  one  man's 
fiat ;  and  that  the  same  influence  should  so  many 
hundred  years  ago  in  the  same  country  have  devel- 
oped an  attack  on  strong  drink  such  as  only  the 
present  century  has  witnessed  in  the  United  Kingdom 
and  America. 

^  Quoted  in  Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  vii.  p.  482. 

^  Not  long  ago  there  lived  in  Bengal  an  old  Hindu 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR   ARABIA. 


55 


advanced  her  to  the  height  of  greatness  would  have  been  so  sublimated  as  to  fix  her 
there  for  ever  ;  though  it  deserves  remembering  that  even  now,  by  her  religion 
and  institutions,  she  gives  law  to  many  of  the  realms  which  have  been  lost  to  her. 
Contenting  ourselves  with  the  conclusions  that  not  only  the  Kenites,  of  whom  was 
Rechab,  and  who  as  a  branch  of  the  Midianite  nation  are  traceable  to  Abraham  and 
Keturah,  but  the  nomadic  Arabs  generally,  have  from  the  first  "  drunk  no  wine  "  ; 
and  that  the  Mecca  lawgiver,  sent  as  he  believed  to  restore  the  faith  and  traditions 
of  Abraham,  exerted  his  authority  to  transmute  this  natural  piece  of  desert  absti- 
nence into  a  taboo  resting  on  a  "  revelation," — it  is  time  to  notice  how  the  Bad-u, 
importing  no  artificial  beverage,  and  often  for  long  periods  without  water,  is  saved 
from  drying  up.  The  Moses  of  his  wilderness,  as  but  few  readers  can  need 
reminding,  is  his  she-camel.  Speaking  for  a  moment  generically  of  this  oldest 
of  living  mammals,^  the  slightest  glance  at  Arabia  shows  the  magnitude  of  the 
services  that  have  been  rendered  by  him,  in  enabling  mankind  to  explore  and 
populate  portions  of  the  earth's  surface  which  but  for  him  would  have  remained 
uninhabited.  Townsmen  may  call  him  "stupid" — the  stupider,  in  many  instances, 
the  servant,  the  better  for  the  master — or  laugh  at  his  long  legs  and  hump  back  ;  but 
Najdian  nomad  prizes  him  as  "  God's  own  bounty."  ^  Truly  he  is  so  :  and  whether 
the  earth  "brought  him  forth"  suddenly,  or  he  was  developed  joint  by  joint  in 
the  course  of  ages,  is  not  very  material.  The  Arab  life  could  not  go  on  without 
him.     Almost  every  word  in  the  Arabic  dictionary,  whatever  may  be  its  first  mean- 


who  was  very  fond  of  brand)'.  When  his  eldest  son 
retiu-ned  from  a  visit  to  London,  and  began  recount- 
ing the  Presences  into  which  he  had  been  admitted, 
the  father  eagerly  asked  him  whether  he  had  seen  John 
Exshaw  !  Yet  this  state  of  things  in  India  should  not 
be  too  much  identified  with  English  rule.  Buddhism 
and  Hinduism  go  back  to  such  remote  ages,  that  it  is 
useless  now  quoting-  them  for  practical  purposes.  In 
the  eleven  centuries  of  partial  Muslim  conquest  and 
rule  in  India,  the  masses  were  in  a  ver)'  primitive  con- 
dition ;  but  even  then,  a  taste  for  noxious  licjuors  per- 
vaded considerable  sections  of  them.  The  late  Nizam 
of  Hyderabad,  in  his  zeal  for  the  Kur-an,  prohibited 
the  sale  of  strong  drink.  The  revenue  realisable  from 
it  he  considered  would  be  swallowed  up  in  paying 
police  magistrates  and  building  prisons  for  its  votaries. 
But  never  did  a  well-laid  theory  prove  more  futile.  A 
Parsee  merchant  having  a  shop  outside  the  city,  in 
British  limits,  drove  a  great  ready -money  trade  in 
champagnes  and  brandies  ;  his  customers'  only  scru- 
ples being  against  the  luriting  of  their  names  in  his 
books  !  Casks  and  bottles  of  the  nectar  passed  into  the 
very  palace,  in  curtained  vehicles  supposed  to  contain 


noble  dames  and  veiled  beauties  !  No  such  furtive- 
ness,  we  hear,  is  now  necessary  anywhere  in  India. 
Every  choice  brand  in  Europe,  equally  with  the 
most  deleterious  arracks,  is  imported.  If  "the  in- 
visible spirit  of  wine,"  as  Cassio  called  it,  the  "enemy 
which  men  put  into  their  mouths  to  steal  away  their 
brains,"  really  be  what  exalts  a  nation,  then  India's 
prospects  were  never  fairer. 

^  6000  camels  formed  part  of  the  wealth  of  Job  : 
one  link  more  between  the  Uz  Shekh  and  the  Arabian 
Bedouin.  From  a  name  for  the  camel  {ja-mal)  now 
being  common  to  all  the  divisions  of  Semitic  speech, 
while  there  is  no  such  common  name  for  the  ostrich, 
or  for  the  date-palm  and  its  fruit,  a  high  authority 
supposes — (i)  that  the  Semites  knew  the  camel  while 
as  yet  one  people  dwelling  together ;  (2)  that  the 
central  table-land  of  Asia,  near  the  sources  of  the  Oxus 
and  Jaxartes,  the  Jaihun  and  Saihun,  where  there  is 
the  camel,  but  not  the  palm  or  ostrich,  was  their  loca- 
tion before  the  breaking  up  of  their  language. 

^  Ba-ra-ka  (pi.  ba-ra-kdt),  now  the  current  ^\'ord 
with  Arabs,  Persians,  and  Muslim  Indians  for  Cod's 
blessing,  means  literally  Increase  of  camels. 


56 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


ing,  denotes  before  we  are  done  with  it  some  part,  or  product,  or  liabit  of  the  camel. 
All  Arabia  is  as  redolent  of  the  living  beast  as  a  country  church  in  pastoral  parts  of 
Scotland  is  of  sheep  and  shepherds  on  a  wet  Sunday.  And  little  wonder,  seeing  that 
even  his  droppings,  like  those  of  the  cow  to  Brahman,  are  pure  to  nomads.  Bedouin 
mothers  wash  their  babies,  and  Bedouin  girls  comb  their  tresses,  in  his  urine  : 
the  desert  caravaner  who  has  been  baking  will  run  up  to  his  staling  camel,  collect  in 
his  hands  the  acrid  fluid,  and  clear  his  fingers  with  it.^  The  dha-lill,  or  pacing- 
camel,  may  be  either  male  or  female ;  but  Arabs  naturally  prefer  for  journeys  the 
nd-m,  or  cow-camel,  who  as  she  sfoes  can  turn  the  weeds  of  the  desert  into  milk  that 
is  meat  and  drink  in  one.  In  grood  seasons  the  camel  kine  are  in  milk  most  of  the 
year ;  and  that  without  requiring,  as  long  as  the  spring  herbage  is  fresh — two  and 
a  half  to  three  months — to  be  taken  to  water.  At  night,  when  they  are  driven 
home,  the  lads  milk  them,  while  their  sisters  take  in  hand  the  smaller  cattle.  A 
bowl  soon  foams  under  every  na-ga,  and  the  sound  of  the  milk-flow  sets  the  mares 
a-whinnying,  so  that  they  are  served  first ;  and  then  they  draw  again  for  the  tent- 
people.  A  foster-camel  is  told  off  for  every  mare ;  and  so  insufficient  is  the  thin 
grass  of  the  summer  desert  to  keep  the  mares  fit  {or  ghas-7i,  that  when,  as  the  year 
advances,  the  camels  have  to  be  sent  botanising  for  days  together,  the  mares  go 
with  them  to  drink  the  nightly  draughts.  We  have  seen  offence  unintentionally 
given  at  tables  where  rechei^ch^  wines  were  flowing,  through  a  guest's  asking  for 
a  glass  of  water.  But  the  greatest  sounder  of  vinous  depths  never  was  more 
disturbed  from  this  cause  than  a  Sha-mi-ya  Shekh  once  was,  on  our  mentioning 
water,  with  a  skinful  of  camel's  milk  hanging  on  trestles  at  the  tent  door.  "  When 
the  butt  is  out" — meaning  the  butt  of  this  chief  sustenance  of  nomads — -"we  will 
drink  water, — not  a  drop  before,"  say  Bedouin.  Four  things  in  the  desert  life  have 
chords  of  their  own  in  every  heart — the  newly-born  male  child  ;  the  guest ;  the  mare  ; 
and  the  she-camel ;  but  the  last  holds  a  unique  place,  at  once  as  nursing-mother, 
and  type  of  wealth  or  increase.  In  Im-ru  '1  Kais'  ballad  the  horse  is  not  introduced 
till  near  the  end.  But  the  same  effusion  cannot  go  further  than  its  fifth  couplet 
without  bringing  in  the  camel ;  while  further  on  are  two  vivid  sketches,  depend- 
ing for  their  interest  not  so  much  on  the  poet's  charmers  as  on  how,  in  the  first, 
he  slaughtered  his  dha-lul  to  feast  a  band  of  maidens,  and  amused  himself  by 
making  them  carry  on  its  trappings ;  in  the  second,  got  up  into  the  fair  U'nai-za's 
camel  litter.  His  contemporary,  A'n-ta-ra,  or  A'n-tar,  happening  in  his  third  couplet 
to  mention  his  na-ga,  instantly  breaks  off  into  a  laudation  of  her.  So  much  does 
perception  wait  on  association,  that  the  na-ga  actually  forms  a  type  of  beauty  for 


1  These  several  statements  rest  on  the  authority  of 
Doughty  {v.  his  vol.  i.,  pp.  212,  237,  et  340).  But  the 
writer,  from  what  he  has  either  seen  or  heard,  can 


bear  witness  to  them.  Compare  the  Scottish  custom 
noticed  in  Adam  Black's  Memoirs,  p.  27,  of  uiash- 
hig  the  head  'with  whisky  J 


CHAP.  III.  PENINSULAR  ARABIA.  S7. 

Arabs. ^  Even  her  voice,  so  harsh  to  us,  furnishes  them  with  an  ideal.  Another 
member  of  the  "  tuneful  quire  "  just  quoted  from  ^  admiringly  compares  the  warbling^ 
of  a  beautiful  glee-maiden  with  the  utterances  of  a  imrsing-camel  over  a  dead  young 
one  I  Tried  by  more  practical  tests  than  the  poetical,  the  relative  value  of  the  mare 
and  the  na-ga  is  regulated  by  circumstances,  and  above  all  by  locality.  When  either 
animal  is  pitted  against  a  bag  of  sovereigns,  the  choice  depends  on  how  much 
the  bag  contains  ;  and  the  nomad's  spiral  fingers  may  be  seen  counting  every  coin 
through  the  material  of  the  bag,  all  the  time  that  he  is  saying  how  useless  money 
is,  compared  with  his  four-footed  treasure,  the  bringer  forth  of  others  like  her. 
But  when  the  same  man  has  to  choose  between  the  mare  and  the  na-ga,  sometimes 
his  wits  are  puzzled.  Guarmani  mentions  his  once  giving  a  hundred  camels  in  Najd 
for  three  desert  stallions  in  the  full  vigour  of  their  age ;  two,  deep  bay,  nearly  black 
— we  take  it  "  Voltigeur's  colour" — the  other,  bay  with  black  points.  He  at  the 
same  time  informs  us,  after  the  manner  of  horse-buyers,  that  this  deal  was  effected 
only  because  of  certain  favouring  circumstances ;  and  that  often  a  hundred  camels 
are  given  for  one  stallion  of  the  very  highest  class,  such  as,  according  to  his  state- 
ment, Bedouin  prize  above  the  mare,  keep  in  separate  pastures,  and  ride  only  in  the 
hour  of  peril.*  This  representation,  in  so  far  as  it  shows  to  us  the  Bedouin  riding 
stallions,  is  too  novel  to  be  accepted  on  one  man's  authority ;  but  without  doubt 
Najd  is  incomparably  more  prolific  in  camels  than  in  horses  ;  ^  so  that  a  whole  string 
of  the  former  may  be  bartered  in  it  for  one  of  the  latter.  It  will  be  seen  further  on 
that  the  conditions  in  this  respect  are  very  different  in  Euphrates  land. 

The  central  thread  of  these  remarks,  it  will  be  remembered,  is,  how  does 
Najdian  nomad  overcome  the  want  of  water  ?  Such  further  details  as  belong  to 
this  subject  will  fall  in  conveniently  if  we  now  recur,  adverting  more  particularly 
to  Central  Arabian  Bad-u  land,  to  the  question  approached,  with  reference  to  all 
the  peninsula,  in  our  preliminary  chapter, — is  the  horse-yield  full  or  inconsiderable  ? 
Palgrave  has  the  following  observations  : — - 

In  Najd — "  a  horse  is  by  no  means  an  article  of  everyday  possession,  or  of  ordinary 
and  working  use.  War  and  parade  are,  in  fact,  almost  the  only  occasions  on  which  it  is 
employed  ;  and  no  genuine  Arab  would  ever  dream  of  mounting  his  horse  for  a  mere  peaceful 
journey,  whether  for  a  short  or  a  long  distance.  Hence  horses  are  the  almost  exclusive 
property  of  the  chiefs ;  who  keep  them  for  themselves,  and  often  for  the  equipment  of  their 
armed  retainers ;  and  of  a  few  wealthy  or  distinguished  individuals,  who  regard  them  as  an 
investment  of  capital  or  an  ornament  of  social  rank.    .    .    .    Military  enterprise  and  the  cen- 


1  jfa-mal,  generically  in  Arabic  The  Camel  (also, 
par  excellence,  the  male),  has  among  its  essential 
meanings  that  of  comelmess,  or  beauty. 

-  Ta-ra-fa,  c.  600  a.d.  :  t.  Index  I.,  art.  (Al)  Mu-a'l- 

LA-KAT. 


3  Lit.,  making  a  note  come  back. 
*  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  27,  p.  41. 
^  Arabs  call  it  Ummu  7  ib-il.,  or  Mother  of  camels; 
not  Ummu  7  khail,  Mother  of  horses. 


H 


S8  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  BOOK  i. 

tralisation  of  wealth  and  power  enabled  the  Wa-ha-bi  chiefs  of  recent  date  to  collect  and 
rear  a  greater  number  of  horses  than  had  perhaps  ever  before  been  possessed  by  a  single 
Arab  potentate  ;  and  the  stables  and  pastures  of  the  Sultan  of  Du-rai-i'-ya  may  well  have,  as 
has  been  stated,  contained  io,ooo  horses,  since  those  of  his  much  enfeebled  successor  at  Riadh 
are  told  off  at  nearly  half  that  amount.  But  if  we  allow  20,000  for  the  total  census  of  pure 
breeds  in  Najd,  a  full  allowance,  and  assign  an  equal  number  to  the  rest  of  the  peninsula,  thus 
making  40,000  in  all,  we  shall  still  be  rather  in  danger  of  an  over  than  of  an  under  statement."  ^ 

Now  all  this  is  the  merest  talk  of  a  townsman  ;  one  who,  as  touching  horses, 
has  not  thought  out  the  subject,  but  would  not  leave  his  book  unadorned  with 
references  to  it.  From  first  to  last  there  is  not  a  word  of  nomads.  "  Chiefs," 
whether  urban  or  rural ;  "  a  few  wealthy  or  distinguished  individuals ; "  and 
"  potentates,"  so  engross  him  that  he  never  gets  within  sight  of  the  clans  of  the 
open.  Lady  A.  Blunt,  as  has  been  seen,  on  realising  at  Ha-yil  that  it  would 
be  impossible  in  Najd  to  go  among  the  Bedouin,  felt  her  curiosity  sated ;  and 
joining  a  train  of  pilgrims,  soon  reached  Baghdad  ^ — no  more  Arabia  than  Cairo 
is  Arabia.     The  following  remarks  by  her,  therefore,  too  much  follow  Palgrave  : 

"  Whatever  may  have  been  the  case  formerly,  horses  of  any  kind  are  now  exceedingly 
rare  in  Najd.  One  may  travel  vast  distances  in  the  peninsula  without  meeting  a  single  horse,  or 
even  crossing  a  horse-track.  Both  in  the  Nu-fndh  and  on  our  return  journey  to  the  Euphrates, 
we  carefully  examined  every  track  of  man  and  beast  we  met ;  but  .  .  .  not  twenty  of  these 
proved  to  be  tracks  of  horses.  The  wind  no  doubt  obliterates  footsteps  quickly ;  but  it  could 
not  wholly  do  so,  if  there  were  a  great  number  of  the  animals  near.  The  Ketherin,  a  true 
Najd  tribe  and  a  branch  of  the  Ba-ni  Kha-lid,  told  us  with  some  pride  that  they  could  mount 
a  hundred  horsemen  ;  and  even  the  Muteyr,  reputed  to  be  the  greatest  breeders  of  thoroughbred 
stock  in  Najd,  are  said  to  possess  only  400  mares.  The  horse  is  a  luxury  with  the  Bedouin 
of  the  peninsula  ;  and  not,  as  it  is  with  those  of  the  North  [Sha-mi-ya],  a  necessity  of  their 
daily  life.  Their  journeys  and  raids  and  wars  are  all  made  on  camel,  not  on  horseback  ;  and 
at  most  the  Shekh  mounts  his  mare  at  the  moment  of  battle.  The  want  of  water  in  Najd  is 
a  sufficient  reason  for  this.  Horses  there  are  kept  for  show  rather  than  actual  use,  and  are 
looked  upon  as  far  too  precious  to  run  unnecessary  risks."  ^ 

A  great  deal  in  the  above  requires,  with  all  conceivable  deference,  to  be 
qualified.  Why,  even  taking  the  slight  data  which  are  stated  in  it,  if  it  had  been 
the  case  that  "  horses  of  any  kind  are  now  exceedingly  rare  in  Najd,"  a  sub-branch 
like  the  Ketherin  would  not  have  boasted  100  mares,  and  the  Muteyr  or  Im-tair 
400.  Darwin  made  the  calculation  of  the  elephant  that,  supposing  a  pair  to 
begin  breeding  at  30,  and  to  go  on  to  90,  bringing  forth  in  that  space  three 
pair  of  young,  then  at  the  end  of  500  years  there  would  be  alive  15  millions 
of  their   descendants.       Where,    then,    is    the    progeny    even    of    the    above    500 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  19,  vol.  ii.  p.  241.  1  ^  Qp_  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  12,  vol.  ii.  p.  13. 

2  V.  supra,  p.  44.  .  I 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR  ARABIA. 


59 


mares  ?  The  numbers  of  the  clan  U'tai-ba  are  given  in  a  footnote  below, 
on  the  sound  authority  of  Doughty,  at  6000  ;  out  of  which  must  surely  come, 
say,  2000  horsemen,  or  more.  We  regret  that  no  positive  evidence  on  this 
subject,  resting  on  our  own  eyesight,  is  with  us.  Nomads  and  their  mares 
are  as  difficult  to  count,  even  when  one  is  in  the  thick  of  them,  as  the 
leaves  of  a  forest-tree  when  a  gale  is  blowing.  The  fact  of  large  bodies  of 
those  Bedouin  who  have  extended  outward  from  Najd,  notably  the  Ru-wa-la, 
re-entering  it  most  years  in  winter,  adds  to  the  uncertainty.  We  cannot  assign 
any  substantial  foundation  to  Palgrave's  figures.  Mr  Doughty  might  have 
collected  statistics  worthy  of  acceptance  ;  but  horse  subjects  occupied  him  only 
casually.  The  professional  horse-buyer  Guarmani,  on  finding  himself  within  the 
enchanted  Najdian  cavern,  may  have  overdrawn  his  description  of  its  treas- 
ures. As  for  the  Arabs,  exaggeration  on  points  of  number,  habitual  to  all  of 
us,  is  carried  by  them  to  its  highest  pitch.  But  looking  at  all  the  evidence,  from 
that  of  the  ancient  poetry  downward,  and  avoiding  equally  the  one  extreme 
and  the  other,  we  can  but  repeat  the  statement  made  in  a  previous  chapter,^ 
in  connection  with  a  view  of  Burckhardt's,  that  if  from  all  the  di-ras  of 
the  untamed  nations  of  the  peninsula "  all  the  squadrons  could  be  mustered,  a 
horde,  or  Urdil,  of  light-horsemen  not  wanting  at  least  in  numbers,  whatever  it 
might  lack  in  discipline  and  coherence,  would  display  itself.  It  almost  counts 
for  a  rule  of  nature  that  wherever  in  Asia  or  Africa  the  ghaz-ti  life  is  led  by 
Bad-us,  there  shall  be  found  the  Bad-u  mare ;  and  Najd  is   no  exception.     What 


1   V.  p.  10,  siip7-a. 

-  The  following  list  of  the  nomadic  nations  of  the 
peninsula,  made  from  records  or  inquiries,  not  travel, 
may  serve  for  want  of  better.  The  several  headings 
are  comprehensive  ;  each  including  an  immense 
number  of  ramifications.  All  the  nations  shown  in  it 
are  not  of  the  same  class.  Many  consist  of  warlike 
mare  and  camel  Bad-us  ;  while  others  rather  resemble 
helots.  Not  impossibly,  several  of  the  headings  may 
be  those  of  peoples  now  absorbed  or  replaced  by 
others  : — 

Al  Mur-RA,  south  of  Al  Ha-sa. 
Ba-n{J  Hijr,  adjacent  di-ras. 
Ba-N^f  Kha-LID,  north  of  Al  Ha-sa. 
Da-wa-SIR,   ostrich-hunters   on   skirts   of  great  Red 

Desert. 
Dha-fir,  towards  Euphrates. 
Harb,  great  and  warlike  nation,  much  ramified,  of 

Al  Hi-jaz. 
Hi-taim,  nomads  ;  spread  all  over  north  of  penin- 
sula, but  not  accounted  Bedouin  ;  famed  for  their 
dha-luls. 


Hu-dhail,  shepherd  nation  of  Meccan  Arabia. 

Hu-wai-tat,  nation  (widely  diffused  and  much  mixed 
in  character)  of  Red  Sea  littoral. 

Im-tair,  the  hornets  of  the  south ;  great  horse- 
breeders. 

Kah-tan,  nation  of  the  south  ;  noble  in  blood,  rich 
in  horses,  but  in  last  degree  fanatical,  truculent, 
unapproachable.  Desert  fable  imputes  to  them 
many  savageries,  including  even  the  drinking 
of  an  enemy's  blood  as  a  mark  of  irrestrainable 
fierceness. 

Ma'z,  N.E.  Red  Sea  littoral,  whence,  like  so  many 
others,  they  ha\'e  pushed  into  Africa. 

Sha-ra-rat,  all  round  Al  Jawf ;  nomadic,  but  squalid. 

Tai,  a  noble  race  ;  long  ago  migrated  out  of  Arabia 
proper,  though  its  roots  are  still  in  Najd. 

U'j-MAN,  Persian  Gulf  littoral,  from  Ku-wait  south- 
ward. 

U'tai-ba,  hardy  warriors.  Desert  between  Ta-ifand 
Ka-sim.  Their  horses  excel.  "  ]May  be  nearly 
6000  souls,"  says  Doughty.  Stubborn  resisters  of 
Ja-bal  Sham-mar  yoke. 


6o 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


the  desert  Shekh  rides  or  does  not  ride  when  merely  on  the  move  or  hover  is 
immaterial  :  in  order  to  his  mounting  his  mare  when  spear-blades  shimmer  on  the 
horizon,  he  must  always  have  her  with  him.  As  for  "  luxury"  and  "  show,"  every- 
thing of  the  kind  belongs  to  townsmen.  It  has  just  been  noticed  how  in  Nu-fudh 
land  the  mare,  instead  of,  as  on  the  grassy  steppes  of  Turk-istan,  supplying  her  master 
with  pailfuls  of  his  favourite  kttmis}  herself  drinks  up  the  milk-flow.  During  an 
expedition  she  is  a  very  great  charge  and  trouble.  How  far  the  Arabian  excels 
other  varieties  in  power  of  doing  without  water  will  be  spoken  of  elsewhere.  Here 
we  need  only  tell  the  reader  that,  although  the  mare  of  Najd  may  not  need  such 
bumpers  as  others  that  have  never  thirsted,  yet  she  is  not  a  little  burdensome  in  this 
way  to  her  master.  Water  once  a-day  is  the  least  that  will  serve  her  :  to  keep  her  like 
what  the  Arabs  call  her,  and  what  she  has  to  be  for  foray,  a  "bird  without  wings," 
she  must  dip  her  muzzle  in  it  oftener.  Long  ago,  when  Clive  was  conquering  Bengal, 
an  observant  Rajah  said  that  if  he  had  a  regiment  of  Englishmen  he  would  send 
them  to  the  field  in  palanquins,  to  be  slipped  like  bull-dogs  under  the  enemy's 
nose.  The  Bedouin's  treatment  of  his  mare  somewhat  carries  out  this  idea. 
Like  the  knight's  war-horse  behind  his  palfrey,  she  is  led  in  the  wake  of  her 
master's  riding-camel.  A  second  camel  takes  the  water-supply — a  great  pile  of 
gurgling  goat-skins,  which  she  empties  in  perhaps  a  couple  of  days.  These  facts 
speak  for  themselves.  Ere  now  the  reader  will  have  discovered  that  the  Arabian 
Bedouin,  whatever  else  he  may  be^  is  not  fool  enough  to  take  all  this  trouble  with  a 
servant  not  worth  it.     If  the  camels  provide  the  mares  with  sustenance,  the  mares 

defend  the  camels  : — 

"  Useless  each  without  the  other," 

as  the  youthful  Hiawatha,  deep  in  dreams  of  Minnehaha,  said  within  himself 
of  man  and  woman.     "  No  one   in  the   Sah-ra,"  says  the  A-mir  A'bdu  '1  Ka-dir, 


1  Also  spelt  koumiss,  the  staple  diink  and  nour- 
ishment of  the  Mongols  :  described  in  Schuyler's 
Turk-istdn  (1876)  as  "sourish  to  the  taste,  but  not 
unpleasant,  and  possessing  agreeable  exhilarating, 
though  not  intoxicating,  qualities."  Marco  Polo 
likens  it  to  -white  wine.  The  mares  are  milked  into 
bottle-necked  horse-skins  ;  some  stuff  is  added  to  set 
up  acetous  fermentation  ;  after  which  they  have  to 
keep  at  it  every  now  and  again  during  several  days 
with  a  churn  -  stick.  The  Turk  -  umans  take  their 
horses  in  spring~to  opener  places  than  their  winter 
quarters.  Foaling  follows ;  ten  days  after  which 
the  foals  are  weaned,  and  their  dams  driven  off  in 
herds,  each  herd  headed  by  a  stallion.  Thereafter 
nearly  all  their  milk  goes  to  the  sustenance  of  their 
masters.  Three  times  in  the  twenty-four  hours  they 
are  brought  in  droves  to  the  tents  to  be  milked,  when 


every  weanling  is  allowed  about  a  couple  of  minutes 
at  the  udder.  Among  all  the  hordes  of  Turk-istan 
and  Turk-menia  the  Khirghiz  come  nearest  the  Arabs 
in  cleverness  at  "  hfting,"  not  sheep  and  camels,  but 
whole  herds,  perhaps  500  head,  of  horses.  There 
is  this  great  difference  between  them,  that  the 
Khirghiz  seldom  ride  mares,  but  either  geldings  or 
entire  horses.  These  they  back  as  yearlings,  alleging 
that  otherwise  they  would  grow  up  unapproach- 
able. Hence  their  horses  are  more  or  less  stunted, 
while  their  mares  excel  in  size.  Often  the  Khirghiz 
get  up  what  they  call  a  baiga  or  horse-race  on  a 
grand  scale,  over  from  30  to  50  miles.  Their  system 
of  training  turns  on  gradually  reducing  the  grass  to 
about  two  straws  a-day — for  the  last  four  or  five  days 
not  even  so  much — while  mare's  milk,  fresh  or  fer- 
mented, is  substituted  for  water. 


CHAP.   III. 


PENINSULAR  ARABIA. 


6i 


"  cares  to  possess  ten  camels  till  he  has  a  horse  to  defend  them  against  those 
who  might  assail  them."  And  again:  "When  you  see  the  horses  of  the  f^om 
[enemy]  marching  proudly,  their  heads  up,  and  making  the  air  re-echo  with 
their  neighings,  rest  assured  that  victory  accompanies  them.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  when  you  see  their  horses  marching  sadly,  with  their  heads  down,  without 
neighing,  but  lashing  themselves  with  their  tails,  be  sure  that  fortune  has 
abandoned  them."  ^  In  desert  warfare  there  is  no  foot-soldiering.  Slow-shootinof 
matchlock  -  men,  perched  on  camels,  represent  at  once  the  infantry  and  artillery. 
When,  if  it  be  a  mere  foray,  the  prey  is  sighted,  or  if  it  be  a  heavier  affair,  the 
hostile  squadrons,  with  the  help  of  his  long  spear  every  Shekh  springs  to  the 
ground.  Another  jump,  and  the  mares  are  mounted ;  and  all  the  riders  scour 
over  the  empty  wilderness,  devil  take  the  hindmost,  cloaks  and  shirts  and 
long  tresses  streaming  out  as  in  a  flight  of  witches.  Meanwhile  the  front  place 
in  the  camel-saddle  is  taken  by  the  ra-dif,  or  second  man,  commonly  a  kind 
of  henchman,  but  often  a  Shekhling  who  has  lost  his  mare.  This  fellow 
opens  fire  with  his  clouted  musket ;  but  as  for  charging  on  a  camel,  Balaam 
might  as  well  have  tried  it  on  his  ass !  All  the  fire  of  her  rider's  Semitic 
nature  enters  into  the  generous  mare.  The  star  on  her  forehead,  or 
blaze  ^  on  her  face,  is  the  oriflamme  of  victory.  The  big  ruminant,  on  the 
contrary,  for  once  misplaced,  is  little  better  than  a  magnified  sheep.  Press  her, 
and  she  will  very  likely  stop  and  bray  ;  perhaps  sink  on  her  knees  and  wallow. 
If,  when  her  rider's  piece  is  empty,  a  horseman  swoop  down  on  him,  all  that  he 
can  do  is  to  jump  off  and  run  for  it,  leaving  her  as  prize  of  war.  When  the 
Bad-u's  mare  is  bounding  under  him,  and  the  fresh  morning  air  raises  his  spirits 
to  the  highest,  one  of  his  cantatas  is  this  : — 

Not  for  me  the  dullard  camel,^ 

Deck  her  saddle  as  they  may  ! 
Bounding  with  her  crest  uplifted,* 

Dearer  far  my  blood-red  bay  ! 
My  blood-red  bay — a  touch  will  turn  her 

In  the  hottest  of  the  fray  ! 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  23,  pp.  14  et  241. 

2  Arabs  call  a  dash  of  white  passing  out  of  the  fore- 
head a  glmr-ra,  meaning  a  ivhite?2ess :  the  colour  in 
their  simple  minds  of  good-omened  things  generally. 
The  Romans,  we  know,  marked  their  good  days  with 
white  pebbles,  and  their  bad  with  black.  In  Najd, 
one  who  meets  a  white  camel  goes  on  his  way  re- 
joicing. May  thy  black  days  become  white  ones,  is  one 
of  their  forms  of  good  wishing. 

^  The  word  thus  translated  is  dha-liil — lit.  meaning, 
brokenj   from   d/mll,  subjection,  or  abasement.     (2u. 


have  we  in  dhiill  and  dull  a  root  common  both  to 
Semitic  and  Indo-European  languages  ?  Or  is  it  a 
mere  accidental  correspondence  of  vocabularies  ? 

*  Afdua  cervix  of  Horace.  Some  desert  horses, 
when  they  are  cantering,  lift  up  the  neck  and  crest 
like  a  serpent,  while  carrying  the  head  perfectly. 
La-bid  depicts  his  mare  as  elevating  her  neck  till 
it  resembled  the  stem  of  a  palm-tree  too  passingly 
smooth  for  the  date-gatherers  to  ascend  it.  Another 
poet  likens  the  long  and  lifted-up  neck  of  his  riding- 
camel  to  the  rudder  of  a  skiff  sailing  up  the  Tigris. 


62 


CHAPTER    IV. 

EXODUSES   OF  BEDOUIN   OUT   OF   NAJD. 

THE  aspects  of  Arabia  proper,  including  the  food  and  water  question,  in  so  far 
as  affecting  horse-breeding,  Iiave  now  been  examined.  It  might  have  been 
stated  further  that,  even  inside  of  the  peninsula,  a  difference  between  tribe  and  tribe, 
in  respect  of  the  size  and  number  of  their  horses,  is  perceptible,  according  as  its 
di-ra  lies  in  the  more  rainless  middle  tracts,  or,  like  the  country  of  Kah-tan  and 
U'tai-ba,  nearer  the  south,  within  reach  of  the  yearly  monsoon. ^  It  will  be  seen 
in  the  sequel  how  this  view  is  confirmed  by  observations  made  outside  of  Najd, 
in  the  desert  pastures  of  the  Euphrates.  The  mere  fact  of  those  trans-peninsular 
regions  which  we  are  to  enter  in  the  next  succeeding  chapters  being  tenanted 
partly  by  Najdian  nomads  yields  an  illustration  of  it.  We  have  already  reckoned 
among  the  causes  of  Bedouin  migration  northward  all  the  political  passages  which 
were  glanced  at  in  connection  with  the  Wahabite  empire  and  the  Ja-bal  Sham-mar 
Shekhate.  But,  that  admitted,  it  is  well  in  evidence  that  the  movements  out  of 
Najd  chiefly  have  depended  on  what  has  sent,  with  us,  the  Celt  into  the  Lowlands — 
nay,  the  Scot  himself  into  England,  and  into  "  New  Caledonias"  all  over  the  world 
— want  of  food  at  home  ! 

Not  to  go  back  to  the  migrations  of  antiquity,  like  that  of  the  Tai  -  into  the 


1  "  The  men  of  the  north  ;  the  horses  of  the  south," 
is  a  saying  in  Najd  ;  where  it  is  not  the  case  that  the 
pure-bred  Arabian  everywhere  is  of  small  stature  or 
stunted.  Once,  on  the  Euphrates,  we  met  officers  of  the 
Sultan's  stables  leading  to  Constantinople  a  bay  horse 
very  like  one  of  our  o\\n  Beacon  course  performers, 
which  we  were  informed  had  lately  been  taken  in  foray 
from  the  southern  nation  of  Kah-tan.  At  the  time  we 
doubted  it,  owing  to  what  is  stated  in  books  about 
Najdian  horses  all  being  small.  Subsequently  we 
have  come  to  know  better  ;  and  the  pity  is  that  these 


Kah-tan  are  too  dangerous  and  fanatical  for  anybody 
who  is  not  one  of  them  to  venture  near  them. 

^  In  Aramaean  or  Syriac,  Ta-yo-ye  supplies  a  com- 
prehensive name  for  all  Arabs  ;  from  which  we  learn 
that  tlie  Aramseans  anciently  had  the  Tai  for  neigh- 
bours. The  tallest  and  noblest-looking  Arab  ever 
seen  by  us  was  a  snowy-bearded  patriarch  of  the 
Tai — a  wealtliy  camel -owner  of  Arbil  (ra  "Ap^-qXa), 
not  far  from  Mosul.  H^-tim,  whose  generosity  is 
still  proverbial,  was  of  the  Tai.  A  legend  of  him  is 
related  by  Layard  :   how  when  the  fame  of  a  mare 


CHAP.    IV. 


EXODUSES    OF  BEDOUIN   OUT   OF  NAJD. 


63 


Tigris  pastures,  the  exits  cliiefly  bearing  on  our  subject  are  the  pushing  north- 
ward, not  so  very  long  ago,  of  the  two  great  rival  nations  of  the  Ae-ni-za  and 
Sham-mar  :  the  former  into  Sha-mi-ya,  better  known  to  Europeans  as  the  "Syrian," 
also  "  Palmyrene,"  desert;  the  latter,  into  the  important  territory  between  or  on 
the  upper  and  middle  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  having  for  its  best-known  land- 
marks Urfa  and  Rak-ka,  Mosul,  Na-si-bin,  and  Di-ar-bakr,  and  called  by  Arabs 
Al  Ja-zi-ra.  Nothing  could  be  closer  than  the  connection  between  both  those 
great  departures  of  the  Arabes  Scenitcv,  or  Tent  Arabs,  and  the  later  history 
of  the  Arabian  horse.  For  one  thing,  he  has  enormously  increased  in  numbers 
in  the  "pastures  new"  thus  opened  out  to  him.  For  another,  Najdian  race 
purity  has  undergone  considerable  alteration  in  the  new  localities.  Reserving 
such  topics,  here  let  us  speak  merely  of  the  exoduses.  It  is  not  in  question 
that  both  proceeded  from  Najd.  It  is  also  well  ascertained  that  the  Ae-ni-za, 
said  by  Lady  A.  Blunt  to  be  to  the  Sham-mar  as  seven  to  three,^  were  the  first 
to  migrate.  No  records  exist  of  the  several  detachments  in  which,  tribe  after 
tribe,  or  family  after  family,  these  first  entered  Sha-mi-ya.^  But  the  famous 
Darley  Arabian  came  from  the  Ae-ni-za.  It  is  further  known  that  he  was 
procured  from  his  breeders,  and  sent  to  England,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  And  hence  it  is  to  be  inferred  that  two  hundred  years 
ago  the  pointing  northward  of  the  Ae-ni-za  had  begun.  Soon  Sha-mi-ya  was 
overrun  by  them  ;  and  that  it  formed,  say  a  hundred  years  ago,  what  it  still  is, 
one  of  the  greatest  breeding-grounds  of  the  Bedouin  horse  in  all  Arabia,  may  be 
gathered  from   Burckhardt's  writing  that  if  any  of  the  European  Powers  required 


in  his  possession  had  travelled  to  the  Golden  Horn, 
and  the  Greek  emperor  (it  happened  before  the 
Turkish  conquest)  sent  men  to  buy  her,  it  was  found 
on  their  disclosing  their  errand  that  the  priceless 
treasure  had  been  slaughtered  for  their  entertain- 
ment, a  time  of  famine  having  spared  neither  sheep 
nor  camel.  Comparatively  recently  a  minor  diffi- 
culty— want  of  firewood — was  thus  got  over  by  a 
Shekh  of  the  Sham-mar  when  strangers  came  to  him. 
A  tra\-elling"  merchant  happened  to  be  passing,  with 
bales  of  coarse  cotton  cloth  upon  his  camels.  A 
number  of  his  bales  were  taken  to  the  guest-tent,  and 
their  contents  torn  up  and  soaked  in  melted  butter. 
A  fire  was  made  with  this,  and  the  coffee-pot  set 
a-boiling,  and  a  dinner  cooked  that  satisfied  eveiy 
one.     Such  is  desert  hospitality. 

^  By  this  authority  the  Ae-ni-za  tents  are  estimated 
approximately  at  30,000,  and  the  Sham-mar  at  12,000 
or  12,500  ;  representing,  at  four  to  a  tent,  the  for- 
mer 120,000,  the  latter  50,000  souls.  Palgrave,  while 
giving  as  the  principal  subdivisions  of  the  Ae-ni-za, 


the  Sba'  on  the  north,  the  Wald  A'li  on  the  west,  and 
the  Ru-wa-la  on  the  south,  and  assigning  to  them  all 
the  space  between  Syria  and  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  guesses 
about  30,000  lances  as  what,  if  united,  they  could  mus- 
ter. Burckhardt's  estimate,  made  fully  half  a  cen- 
tury earlier,  allowed  to  the  Ae-ni-za  a  total  of  no 
fewer  than  from  300,000  to  350,000  souls. 

Of  the  Sham-mar  Palgrave  says  that  their  num- 
bers about  equal  those  of  the  Ae-ni-za ;  but  this 
view  is  at  variance  with  common  Arab  belief.  All 
Arabia  has  it  that  the  palm  of  valour  is  as  clearly 
with  the  Sham-mar  as  superiority  of  numbers  is  with 
the  .\e-ni-za  ;  in  fact,  that  if  the  Sham-mar  were  any- 
thing like  as  many  as  their  ri\als,  there  would  be  no 
Ae-ni-za  left. 

-  Once  when  marching  down  the  Euphrates  valle)', 
west  the  ri\-er,  we  halted  for  the  night  on  a  rocky 
slope  called  Tal-d't  Mil-him :  according  to  local  tra- 
dition, the  spot  where  a  detachment  of  Ae-ni-za  made 
its  first  lodgment  in  Sha-mi-ya,  led  by  a  certain  Shekh 
Mil-him. 


64  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

Arabians  to  ennoble  their  studs,  Damascus — western  gateway  of  Sh^-mi-ya — was 
the  best  place  for  their  purchasing  agents  to  visit.^ 

The  Sham-mar  exodus  from  Najd  occurred  about  a  hundred  years  ago.  At 
Mosul  old  people  still  refer  to  it  almost  as  if  it  had  happened  in  their  time,  in  words 
reminding  one  of  the  mission  sent  by  Moses  to  spy  out  Canaan.^  About  1804,  they 
tell  us,  a  Sham-mar  free  lance,  called  Abu  Ru-wais,  or  the  man  with  the  little 
head,  evidently,  however,  having  a  good  deal  in  it,  chancing  to  ride  a  foray  in 
Sha-ml-ya,  followed  it  up  to  the  Euphrates ;  and  obtaining  from  the  river's  western 
bank  a  view  of  the  pastures  on  the  further  side,  pushed  across  to  explore.  Finding 
the  land  as  fat  as  Najd  was  lean,  he  and  his  comrades  carried  back  such  a  descrip- 
tion as  made  every  mouth  water  :  nay,  even  took  with  them  bundles  of  produce ; 
like  the  Israelitish  tribes,  and  the  "  grapes,  pomegranates,  and  figs."  Drought, 
it  happened,  had  brought  Najd  that  year  to  starvation-point :  so  that  the  Sham- 
mar  were  only  too  glad  to  issue  out  of  it,  like  eager  hornets ;  till  by  degrees,  after 
beating  off  every  opponent,  they  occupied,  Arab  fashion,  Al  Ja-zi-ra. 

Leaving  the  above  two  important  departures  to  serve  as  specimens  of  very 
many  others,  some  account  of  the  three  geographical  spaces  which  have  thus  been 
added  to  the  country  of  the  Arabian  horse  has  to  be  attempted  in  the  next  three 
chapters. 

'  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog'.  No.  15,  vol.  ii.  p.  57.  "-  Numbers  xiii. 


6s 


CHAPTER    V. 

SHA-MI-YA:    or    deserts    WEST    THE    EUPHRATES. 

ALL  the  regions  watered  by  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  from  about  Ba-lis  on 
the  latter,  in  lat.  36°,  to  the  Persian  Gulf  and  Arabia  proper  in  the  south,  are 
divided  by  the  Arabs  into  Bd-di-atu  'sh  Sham,  or  "  desert  of  the  North,"  oftener 
Sha-mi-ya  ;  Bd-di-atu  Y  Ja-zi-ra,  or  "  desert  of  Al  Ja-zi-ra  "  ;  and  Bd-di-atu  '/  Prdk, 
or  "  desert  of  Lrak."  Practically,  Sham  means  the  North ;  and  Sha-mi-ya,  towards 
the  North.  But  Sham  also  is  the  Arabs'  name  at  once  for  the  country  which  we 
call  Syria,  extending  for  some  400  miles  between  the  Mediterranean  and  the 
Euphrates,  and  for  its  capital  Damascus,  a  very  ancient  settlement  of  Semites.^ 
The  translation  "  Syrian  desert "  commonly  serving  for  Shd-mi-ya  is  right,  if  by 
"Syrian"  be  understood  northern;  misleading,  if  it  suggest  that  Sha-mi-ya  forms 
part  of  Syria.  Filling  up  the  space  between  Palestine  and  the  middle  Euphrates  ; 
insensibly  merging  in  Syria  towards  the  north  ;  entering  on  the  south  the  pen- 
insula, Sha-mi-ya  belongs  to  Arabia.  No  one  who  has  crossed  its  harsh  and  arid 
uplands,  formed  mostly  of  gypsum  and  marls ;  thirsted  in  its  waterless  wa-dis ; 
and  shared  the  life  of  its  gJiaz-u  riders,  will  hesitate  to  reckon  it  to  the  great 
lone  land  of  the  Ba-da-wi.  The  "Arabia"  into  which  Paul  "went  away"  from 
Damascus  apparently  was  Sha-mi-ya."-^  Compared  with  the  circle  of  foliage  and 
verdure  which  surrounds  Damascus,  one  might  rashly  say  of  Sha-mi-ya,  "  there  is 
no  good  in  it "  ;  but  after  most  parts  of  Arabia  proper,  it  must  well  content 
the  nomad.  The  Euphrates  washes  all  its  eastern  margin.  Out  of  its  stony 
central  region,  called,  par  excellence,  the  Ha-mdd,  or  desert,  the  Ae-ni-za  issue  in 
summer  to  dress  their  water-skins  in  the  river,  and  freshen  up  their  mares  with 
green  grass  and  barley.  A  striking  feature  of  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates  is 
the  numerous  perished  cities — awaiting   the    labours    and    discoveries    of  another 

1  Gen.  XV.  2.  2  Q.j]  i   j-,_ 


66 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


Layard— of  which  it  contains  the  traces.  But  it  is  also  studded  with  villages, 
one  or  two  of  them  almost  towns ;  indeed  everywhere  are  scattered  over  it,  in 
tents  and  hamlets,  communities  engaged  in  husbandry.  The  Ha-mad  itself 
contains  oases  to  which,  in  a  general  way,  the  description  given  above  of  Al 
Ha-sa  is  applicable.  Chief  among  these  is  Tadmor,  or  Palmyra,^  about  i6o 
miles  north-east  from  Damascus,  and  five  days'  camel  journey  from  the  Eu- 
phrates. Whether  this  belongs  more  to  Syria  or  Sha-mi-ya  need  not  here  be 
debated.  Neither  does  it  concern  us  to  recall  the  picturesque  events  of  which  in 
the  third  Christian  century  it  formed  the  theatre  :  how,  from  a  mere  ploughland 
of  settled  Semites  taken  by  some  desert  lord  under  his  protection,  Tadmor,  aided 
by  the  convenience  of  its  site  on  the  caravan  route  between  Asia  Minor,  Europe, 
and  the  Indian  and  Chinese  east,  expanded  into  a  commercial  emporium  : 
how,  after  its  incorporation  by  Rome  with  her  own  imperial  system,  it  figured 
for  1 50  years  and  more  as  mistress  of  the  Roman  east  :  how  its  widowed 
queen,  Zenobia — the  Boadicea  of  her  race  and  country — aiming  at  political  Inde- 
pendence, with  the  desert  at  her  back,  and  all  its  chivalry  united  under  her, 
defied  Rome's  veteran  generals  :  how,  at  last,  the  Emperor  Aurelian  marched 
against  the  "  Queen  of  the  East,"  after  an  arduous  siege  took  her  city,  and 
carried  off  the  swarthy  heroine  to  attend  his  chariot  to  the  Capitol.  More  to  the 
present  purpose  are  these  two  views  of  Tadmor.  In  the  poor  hamlet  now  dis- 
posing itself  among  its  fallen  fortifications  and  long  lines  of  Corinthian  columns, 
supplies  are  procurable ;  so  that  if  one  can  but  master  the  objections,  or  elude 
the  vigilance,  of  the  Osmanli  revenue  officer  posted  in  it,  there  is  no  better  place 
to  start  from   in  search  of  the  wasp-like  legions  of  the  Ae-ni-za. 

What  a  mighty  difference  it  must  make  to  Sha-mi-ya  horse-breeders  to  have 
the  Euphrates  to  fall  back  on,  may  be  imagined.  Here,  in  its  middle  course,  the 
historical  river  formed  the  boundary  long  ago  between  the  Assyrian  empire  on 
the  east  and  the  great  nation  of  the  Hittites  on  the  west;  rather  later,  the 
standards  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  often  were  reflected  in  its  waters. 

"  But  something  ails  it  now  :  the  spot  is  cursed."  ^ 


1  The  derivation  of  the  name  Palmyra  bestowed 
by  the  Greeks  and  Romans  is  obvious  enough.  Its 
Semitic  name  of  Tadmor,  substantially  the  same  both 
in  Arabic  and  Hebrew,  from  tamar,  a  palm,  equally 
indicates  what  still  forms  the  principal  natural  feature 
of  the  same  spot.  But  when  it  comes  to  pronounc- 
ing this  the  identical  "  Tadmor  in  the  wilderness  "  of 
2  Chron.  viii.  4,  as  built  by  Solomon,  recent  Bibli- 
cal criticism  follows,  as  usual,  two  courses.  Be  this 
as  it  may,  the  ruins  still  throwing  their  shadows  over 
Tadmor  belong  to  the  same  imposing  order  as  those 


of  the  Temple  of  the  Sun  at  Baalbek,  the  Temple  of 
Jupiter  at  Athens,  and  the  Parthenon.  In  1694  this 
mine  of  archaeology  was  rediscovered  by  a  party  of 
EngUsh  merchants  settled  in  Aleppo,  distant  about 
seven  days  for  dromedaries.  Half  a  century  later  an- 
other Englishman  (R.  Wood)  published  large-scale 
drawings  of  the  ruins,  with  historical  preface,  under 
the  title  of  The  Ruins  of  Palmyra,  otherwise  Tadmor 
in  the  Desert  (1753). 
2  Wordsworth. 


CHAP.  V.         SHA-Ml-YA:    OR   DESERTS    WEST   THE  EUPHRATES. 


67 


Nothing  more  heroic  than  a  ghas-7c  of  the  Ae-ni-za  on  the  Sham-mar,  or  the 
Sham-mar  on  the  Ae-ni-za,  now  crosses  it.  In  winter,  when  the  nights  are  long, 
the  water  cold  and  swollen,  and  the  formidable  ghai-ldn  ^  blowing,  raids  are  out 
of  season.  In  spring  also,'  when  the  mares  are  foaling,  they  are  as  far  as  possible 
avoided.  At  such  times  we  have  ridden  up  and  down  the  Euphrates  valley 
without  ever  catching  a  glimpse  of  Bedouin.  But  later  on,  when  the  fords  are 
easy,  and  the  interior  of  the  Ha-mad  is  glowing  like  a  brick-kiln,  and  water  and 
pasture  have  to  be  made  a  push  for,  among  the  features  of  the  landscape  some- 
times are  clouds  of  spearmen,  passing  like  sandstorms  over  the  rocky  ground, 
or  emerging,  mares  in  hand,  naked  and  dripping  from  the  river.  Of  the  extent 
to  which,  from  ancient  times,  as  now  under  the  very  eye  of  the  Osmanli,  the 
Euphrates  is  thus  held  in  fee  by  nomads,  proofs  may  be  seen  near  A'na,  on  its 
Sha-mi-ya  border.  On  either  side  of  a  gully  stand  two  piles  of  masonry,  evidently 
once  the  props  of  a  bridge  across  it.^  These  are  covered  with  rude  scratchings, 
not  unlike  those  which,  when  copied  and  sent  to  Europe,  open  up  new  alphabets 
and  histories.  But  the  Arabs  came  to  I'rak  too  late  to  use  the  old  proto-Arabic 
letters.  The  Khaz-ga  hieroglyphics  merely  are  reproductions,  made  by  all  the 
nations  of  Arabia,  of  the  distinctive  marks  with  which  they  brand  their  camels,^ 
as  Australian  horse-breeders  do  their  horses. 

Next  to  its  river,  the  great  advantage  of  Sha-mi-ya  is  the  opportunity  of 
buying  barley  which  its  cultivated  borders  and  oases  afford  to  nomads.  Other- 
wise, the  physical  conditions  are  essentially  those  of  Central  Arabia.  Springs 
known  only  to  Bedouin  must  exist ;  but  we  never  saw  one  —  only  wells  at 
long  intervals  on  the  caravan  tracks ;  with,  at  most  seasons,  collections  of  rain- 
water   in    natural    depressions.       The  rainfall   is  greater  and  less  precarious  than 


'  According  to  some,  ihe. ghai-ldii  is  a  piercing  wind ; 
according  to  others,  merely  an  extraordinary  coldness. 
They  who  go  out  in  it  muffle  their  heads  ;  and  Bed- 
ouin put  stitches  through  certain  of  their  mares'  parts, 
to  exclude  it  from  their  vital  organs.  The  name 
may  come  out  of  the  Arabic  verb  ghdla,  used  of 
mischief  or  destruction,  falling  on  one  unawares: 
ex  quo,  the  Arab  ghnl  (our  ghoul  or  bogle),  i.e.,  a 
demon,  which,  appearing  to  travellers,  causes  them 
to  wander,  and  destroys  them.  Even  in  mild  forms 
of  ghai-ldn  experienced  by  us,  with  the  sun  at  noon 
as  powerful  as  at  the  same  season  (January)  in 
Lahore,  and  the  temperature  well  above  freezing,  we 
have  felt  in  Sha-mi-ya  the  cold  as  piercing,  where 
the  wind  was  blowing,  as  ever  we  did  at  Cabul  with 
snow  on  the  ground,  and  the  thermometer  near  zero. 
In  the  Ha-mad  a  legend  runs  of  a  whole  gliaz-u 
having  perished,  man   and   beast,  in   the  ghai-ldn; 


except  one  rider,  who,  by  disembowelling  his  camel 
and  taking  shelter  inside,  contrived  to  keep  himself 
alive  till  its  worst  was  over. 

-  A'na  townsmen  call  this  spot  Gan-ta-ra  Khaz-ga, 
or  Bridge  of  Khaz-ga.  Bedouin,  confining  themselves 
to  what  they  see,  call  it  Ha-ja-rat  Khaz-ga,  or,  as  we 
might  say,  the  Standing  Stones  of  Khaz-ga. 

^  These  marks,  made  with  a  hot  iron,  are  called 
wasm  (pi.  au-sdm).  Such  of  them  as  we  ha\'e  seen 
have  not  been  pictorial,  but  vague  scrawlings,  like  the 
following  : 


O 


rr"^T^ 


Nevertheless,  travellers  should  not  despise  these  old 
wasm,  because  of  their  being  "only  camel  brands." 


68  COUNTRY   OF   THE  ARABIAN.  ■     book  i. 

in  Najd  ;  but  it  all  comes  in  winter  and  spring.  They  who  traverse  Sha-mi-ya, 
as  the  writer  did,  at  the  end  of  summer,  must  wonder  what  the  Ae-ni-za  mares 
live  on.  But  for  a  low  thin  grass  and  a  few  sapless  shrubs,  all  is  barren- 
ness. When,  after  going  all  night,  one  dismounts  towards  morning,  to  snatch 
a  little  sleep,  his  fear  of  losing  hold  of  his  horse's  bridle  is  almost  like  one's 
clinging  to  the  boat  after  a  capsize  in  a  river.  Only  a  fool  of  a  town-horse, 
it  is  true,  one  all  bubble  and  squeak,  fresh  from  a  manger,  would  run  off  in 
such  a  place ;  and  even  he  would,  if  left  alone,  probably  soon  come  back.  Still, 
just  as  a  Bramah  lock  is  better  than  the  trustiest  servant,  so  is  precaution 
always  best ;  and  however  superior  the  desert  mare's  intelligence  may  be,  her 
master,  we  notice,  as  often  as  he  calls  a  halt  in  Sha-mi-ya,  slips  a  pair  of 
irons  round  her  fore- pasterns.  One  thing  with  another,  for  a  fine  sense  of 
"pastoral  melancholy"  we  recommend  the  reader  to  Sha-mi-ya  in  the  dog-days. 
In  the  morning,  when  the  sun  comes  up  like  a  fire-ball,  the  flinty  plain  looks 
in  its  emptiness  as  if  created  merely  to  form  a  temple  for  him.  How  changed 
all  this  becomes  when  the  spring  rains  have  fallen,  the  descriptions  in  Bedouin 
Tribes  of  the  Euphrates  show.  The  authoress  and  her  husband,  leaving  the 
Euphrates  at  Der,  penetrated  in  March  and  April,  by  way  of  Tadmor,  far  into 
Sha-mi-ya ;  meeting  the  Ug-mu-sa,  Ru-wa-la,  Wald  A'li,  and  other  horse-breed- 
ing septs  of  the  Ae-ni-za.  They  often  came  on  shallow  pools,  or  successions 
of  pools,  covering  several  acres ;  also  on  wa-dis,  "  some  forty  feet  below  the 
level  of  the  plain  ;  and  on  at  least  one  vast  bed  of  grass  and  flowers."  In  one 
place  was  "a  splendid  plain  of  rich  grass,  enough  to  feed  all  the  Ae-ni-za  for 
a  week ;  "  in  another,  "  a  dry  water-course  thick  with  grass,"  in  which  quails  and 
the  cuckoo  were  calling. 

Elsewhere  we  shall  speak  of  the  nomadic  herdsmen  of  Sh^-mi-ya  and  their 
horses.      Here  we  are  but  noting  the  principal  features  of  their  location. 

A  good  starting-point  for  the  interior  of  Sha-mi-ya  is  Der,  about  140  miles 
higher  up  the  Euphrates  than  A'na — nine  caravan  stages  from  Aleppo,  ten  from 
Damascus,  and  eight  from  Mosul.  Lady  A.  Blunt  says  of  Der  that  "  it  is,  for  a 
stranger,  by  far  the  best  market  for  thoroughbreds  [i.e.,  thoroughbred  Arabians] 
in  Asia."^  This,  and  the  companion  statement  of  there  being  "no  horses  at  Der 
but  thoroughbreds,"  she  explains  by  saying  that  its  townsmen,  being  but  a  single 
step  removed  from  their  undoubted  ancestors  the  Bedouin,  buy  their  colts  as  year- 
lings, either  from  the  Ug-mu-sa  or  from  some  other  of  the  Ae-ni-za  tribes,  and  sell 
them  as  three  years  old  to  Aleppo  merchants.  The  authority  for  this  is  not 
given,  and  our  experience  is  different.     Once  we  visited  Der  in  search  of  horses, 

1  OJ).  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  ii,  vol.  i.  p.  117. 


CHAP.  V.        SHA-Mf-YA:    OR  DESERTS    WEST   THE  EUPHRATES. 


69 


and  saw  none  worth  buying.  Dealers  were  there  from  Aleppo,  Baghdad,  and  other 
places.  But  these  were  either  bound  for  the  Ae-ni-za,  hordes  of  whom  were  near ; 
or  were  on  the  watch  to  buy  any  nondescript  animals,  resaleable  at  a  profit,  on 
which  travellers,  or  their  escorts,  might  ride  into  the  town.  In  truth,  the  population 
of  Der  and  of  the  hamlets  round  it  is  very  mixed.  The  town  is  full  of  Ottoman 
officials,  who  are  apt  to  pounce  on  good  horses  whenever  they  see  them,  and  pay 
little  or  nothing  for  them.  Not  only  does  this  stop  the  Bedouin  from  bringing  in 
colts,  but  it  makes  even  dealers,  after  a  successful  visit  to  the  Ae-ni-za,  take  their 
purchases  towards  the  intended  market  by  another  route  than  Der.  And  thus  in 
all  such  towns  the  outsider's  chance  of  finding  a  treasure  dwindles.  Among 
the  horses  in  the  possession  of  influential  residents,  one  may  now  and  then  occur 
which  has  stood  for  a  year  or  two  only  because  of  the  largeness  of  the  price  put 
on  him.  Oftener  the  reason  is  that  dealer  after  dealer  has  rejected  him.  At  the 
best,  such  will  generally  prove  to  have  been  reared  from  foalhood  tied  to  a  manger ; 
and  after  that,  let  a  horse's  blood  and  figure  be  what  they  may,  he  is  not  the  same 
,  as  if  he  had  been  left  for  his  first  year  or  two  in  the  desert.  Certainly  there  is 
always  fresh  news  of  the  Ae-ni-za  in  Der.  The  talk  of  its  coffee-houses  is  of 
the  Bedouin.  Riding-camels  can  be  bought  in  it :  with  water-skins,  Arab  saddles 
and  saddle-bags,  and  all  the  paraphernalia  of  travel  ;  many  of  which  articles,  as 
might  be  expected,  considering  that  horsemen  and  "  sons  of  the  road "  have 
invented  them,  excel  at  once  in  lightness,  strength,  and  utility.  But  he  who 
would  buy  Bedouin  horses  in  Sha-mi-ya,  as  in  Najd,  should  go  to  the  Bedouin 
for  them  ;  and  if  using  at  all  the  dal-ldl}  or  go-between,  believe  nothing  of  what 
is  said,  and  only  half  of  what  is  shown,   to  him. 


^  Lit.,  one  luhose  avocation  it  is  to  show.  In  towns, 
open  -  air  auctions  of  mules,  donkeys,  and  inferior 
horses  are  daily  held.  A  different  form  of  auction  is 
in  vogue  for  superior  liorses.  The  animal  is  sent 
from  house  to  house  with  a  paper,  in  which  every  one 


■\\-ho  would  buy  him  enters  the  price  which  he  will 
pay  ;  and  thus  a  deal  is  effected.  Over  and  above 
all  this,  or  rather  as  part  of  it,  the  dal-ldl  is  always 
on  the  alert. 


^o 


CHAPTER    VI. 

AL    JA-Zi-RA:    OR    DESERTS    EAST    THE    EUPHRATES. 

APOLOGY  may  be  necessary  in  again  introducing  an  unfamiliar  geographical 
term  ;  but  if  "  Mesopotamia  "  had  been  written,  would  the  locality  of  refer- 
ence have  been  any  the  clearer  ?  The  bestowal  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans  of 
names  of  their  own  mintage  on  the  Asiatic  countries  invaded  by  them  w?s  only 
natural ;  but  it  is  not  surprising  that,  except  in  books,  such  pieces  of  nomenclature 
have  faded.  Mesopotamia,  a  rendering  of  the  far  older  Arameean  name  betJi 
nahrtn  =  country  between  the  two  rivers,^  dates  only  from  the  time  of  Alex- 
ander. Yet  it  is  in  all  our  translations  of  the  Bible,  from  Genesis  to  Chronicles  ; 
one  of  those  sonorous  words  which  are  the  more  edifying  from  neither  reader  nor 
hearer  knowing  too  much  about  them.  In  modern  European  literature  Meso- 
potamia bears  now  an  exceedingly  extended,  again  a  narrower,  application.  We 
cannot  lend  ourselves  to  the  view  which  would  understand  by  it  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates  valleys,  from  the  Alpine  heights  of  Armenia  to  the  Gulf  of  Persia ;  but 
neither  can  we  consider  here  all  the  questions  which  require  to  be  discussed  before 
this  foreign  term  can  be  used  intelligently ;  wherefore  in  these  pages  it  will  be  in- 
troduced but  sparingly.  Inasmuch  as  Al  Ja-zi-ra  is  an  Arabic  name  bestowed  by 
the  Arabs  on  a  land  outside  of  Arabia  overrun  by  them  about  their  Prophet's  era, 
perhaps  it  too  should  be  accounted  foreign.  But  here  the  difference  is  that,  notwith- 
standing the  Turkish  conquest  nearly  400  years  ago,  Arabs  with  varying  preten- 
sions to  the  name,  and  greatly  mixed  with  Kurds,  Turk-u-mans,  and  others,  still 
occupy  it.  The  name  means  T/ie  Ctit  off.  But  etymology  is  not  to  be  pressed 
against  usage ;  and  a  Ja-zt-ra,  whether  an  island  or  a  peninsula,  necessarily  is  a 


^  Till  recently  it  has  passed  for  certain  that  the  two 
rivers  meant  are  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates  ;  and  no 
different  view  is  adopted  in  these  pages.  But  the 
possibility  should  be  mentioned  of  the  boundary  rivers 


having  been  the  Euphrates  and  its  principal  affluent 
the  Chaboras  or  Khabur.  This  would  limit  the  desig- 
nation of  Mesopotamia  to  the  western  half,  or  less,  of 
the  territory  here  included  in  it.      V.  p.  74,  inf7-a. 


CHAP.  VI.        AL    JA-Zt-RA:    OR   DESERTS  EAST  THE  EUPHRATES.  71 

space  marked  off  by  waters.  Al  Ja-zi-ra  of  the  present  description  does  not 
carry  its  irregular  northern  confines  higher  than,  say,  Mosul  on  the  Tigris,  and 
Su-mai-sat  on  the  Euphrates.  Its  southern  extension  similarly  is,  not  to  the  sea 
of  Persia,  but  only  to  a  little  above  the  parallel  of  Baghdad.  Within  those  limits, 
neither  does  it  embrace  all  the  area  between  the  rivers,  nor  refuse  numerous 
trans  -  riverine  pieces.  Much  of  the  space  between  the  rivers,  as  will  appear 
in  the  following  chapter,  includes  itself  in  Trak ;  while  many  strips  west  of  the 
Euphrates,  with  many  others  east  of  the  Tigris,  are  properly  Al  Ja-zi-ra.  In  fine, 
and  subject  to  these  qualifications,  if  the  Greeks  meant  by  their  Mecro77-oTa)u,ta  the 
territory  on,  or  between,  the  viiddle  portions  of  the  two  historic  rivers,  then  is 
Mesopotamia  very  nearly  Al  Ja-zi-ra.  Leaving  these  topics,  we  here  restrict 
ourselves  to  the  aspects  of  Al  Ja-zi-ra  as  a  Bad-u  land  expatiated  in  by  the  race  of 
Najd.  So  far  as  this  goes,  if  the  mission  of  its  Ottoman  masters  had  been  to  hold 
it  in  trust  for  nomads,  they  might  boast  to-day  of  having  succeeded.  From  Mosul, 
Aleppo,  and  Baghdad,  and  from  numerous  posts  on  both  the  rivers,  they  are  sup- 
posed to  grasp  it.  But  in  all  the  great  triangle,  250  miles  long,  with  an  area  of  at 
least  55,000  square  miles,  which  composes  it,  the  Turkish  fez  is  seldom  seen  out- 
side of  towns.  The  Osmanli  official  when  he  is  travelling  in  it  condescends  to  cover 
his  head  with  the  Arab  handkerchief  Over  most  of  it  Shekh  is  a  better  name  to 
conjure  with  than  Sultan  or  Pasha.  The  Sham-mar  free-lance,  when  saying  "stand" 
to  a  raft  of  merchandise  on  the  Tigris,^  or  driving  before  him  the  flocks  of  towns- 
men, realises  what  a  far  cry  it  is  to  the  nearest  garrison.  And  yet  occasionally 
proof  is  given  that  if  the  Osmanli  cannot  govern,  he  has  ways  of  his  own  of 
striking.  A  few  cajoling  letters,  ending  in  a  cup  of  poisoned  coffee,  or  in  the 
deputation  of  an  executioner  pretending  to  be  an  ally,  sometimes  serve  with 
Turks  all  the  uses  of  police  and  courts  of  justice.  Within  the  memory  of  living 
people,  the  Shekh  of  all  the  Sham-mar  slew  in  his  sacred  guest-tent  a  desert  rival, 
contrary  to  every  obligation  of  Arab  honour ;  and  when  the  Governor  of  Baghdad 
was  apprised  of  it  he  feigned  approval ;  sent  one  of  his  partisan  leaders  ostensibly 
to  support  the  homicide,  in  reality  to  deal  with  him  as  he  had  dealt  with  the  other ; 
and  soon  the  culprit's  head  was  brought  into  the  town.  More  recently  a  cockerel  of 
the  same  nest  rose  to  eminence  as  a  public  enemy.  Goaded  into  a  kind  of  fury,  as 
some  say  by  a  luckless  wooing,  this  hero  of  not  a  little  desert  fable  long  played  the 
Rob  Roy  against  all  villagers  and  peaceful  folk ;  till  at  last  the  Mosul  Government, 
on  his  being  delivered  up  by  one  with  whom  he  had  taken  refuge,  hanged  him 
publicly.     But  such  things  do  not  often  happen.      In  the  main,  "live  and  let  live" 


^  As  we  write  (1890),  an  Assyriologist  from  the  Brit- 
ish Museum  informs  us  that  in  coming  down  the  Tigris 
on  a  raft  from  Mosul,  he  showed  a  Constantinople  Bu- 


yurl-dl,Q)X  order,  to  a  band  of  roaming  Arabs,  and  that 
the  innocent,  if  futile,  document,  so  far  from  being  re- 
spected, was  subjected  before  his  eyes  to  indignity. 


72 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  I. 


is  the  policy.  On  tlie  one  hand,  Al  Ja-zi-ra  Bedouin  restrain  their  lawlessness ; 
on  the  other,  Turkish  authorities  seldom  bring  things  to  an  issue  with  them. 
Not  remoteness  of  situation,  not  aridity,  not  the  strength  of  its  Bedouin,  not 
religion,  but  only  the  Turk's  way  of  taking  countries  and  letting  others  use  them, 
lies  at  the  root  of  this.  There  is  no  Wahabyism  in  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  and  not  much  even 
of  Islamism;  the  unwritten  laws  of  the  desert,  not  the  Mecca  Prophet's  Institutes, 
govern  its  nomads.  A  political  mosaic  like  that  of  Hi-yil,  having  a  castle  in  the 
middle  of  it,  is  impossible  so  near  the  Osmanli.  Either  the  ancient  and  natural 
strength  of  the  desert  must  be  held  fast  to,  or,  as  Persians  say,  the  saddle-cloth  of 
obedience  to  foreign  governors  more  and  more  carried  on  the  back  of  the  national 
life.  The  last  great  "desert  king"  of  Al  Ja-zt-ra  was  he  whose  head  was  fetched 
off  by  a  Baghdad  Pasha  in  the  circumstances  above  alluded  to.  What  a  falling  off 
there  was  in  him  from  the  old  Najdian  ideal  appeared  in  his  disposition  to  lean 
on  the  Osmanli ;  his  treacherous  murder  of  a  guest ;  and  his  taking  to  wife  a  towns- 
woman.  After  his  tragic  ending  he  was  followed  in  the  Shekhate  by  his  son  Far- 
hin,  who  died  at  a  good  old  age  only  the  other  day,  in  the  Arab  quarter  of  Baghdad. 
The  last  order  which  Far-han  ever  gave  was,  that  the  Surgeon  of  the  British 
Consulate  should  be  summoned  to  save  him ;  but  his  hour  was  come.  Happen- 
ing to  pass  the  spot  where  they  were  burying  him,  we  heard  it  bitterly  remarked 
by  many  how,  while  accepting  several  thousand  pounds  a-year  of  Turkish  money, 
under  the  pretence  of  settling  his  people  at  Kal-a'  Sher-gat  on  the  Tigris,  he 
had  permitted,  if  not  encouraged,  the  plunder  of  flocks  and  merchandise.  And 
now  his  son  Mij-wal  has  succeeded  him,  always  under  Osmanli  favour  and  patron- 
age. For  the  last  twenty  years,  however,  all  the  more  stubborn  heads  of  tents 
in  these  northern  Sham -mar,  deserting  Shekh  Far-hin,  have  kept  gathering 
round  his  half-brother  and  rival,  Fa-ris.^  Perhaps  it  belongs  to  the  Osmanli 
policy  to  cajole,  and  be  cajoled  by,  only  a  section  of  a  clan  or  nation.  Too  many 
Far-hans  and  Mij-wals — that  is,  if  the  latter  walk  in  his  late  father's  steps — may  be 
considered  not  worth  the  price.  Or  perhaps  it  is  that  Fa-ris,  warned  by  the  fate 
of  his  brother,  born  of  the  same  father  and  noble  Arab  mother — him  above  referred 
to  as  hanged  at  Mosul — has  deliberately  chosen  to  play  the  game  of  desert  politics 


1  How  Lady  A.  Blunt  spent  some  days  with  Fa-ris 
near  the  town  of  Der,  in  March  1878 ;  how  she 
found  him  "  very  good  -  looking,  with  a  clear  olive 
complexion  not  darker  than  that  of  a  Spaniard,  an 
aquiline  nose,  black  eyebrows  meeting  almost  across 
his  forehead,  and  eyes  fringed  all  round  with  long 
black  lashes,  smile,  one  of  the  most  attractive  one 
can  see;"  how  "Wilfrid"  and  Fa-ris  solemnly  swore 
an  oath  of  brotherhood  for  all  their  lives  ;  how  Fa- 


ris  immediately  thereafter  borrowed  from  his  big 
brother  a  £\o  note,  there  being  in  the  Sham-mar 
camp  "  no  clothes  to  the  women's  backs,"  the  coffee 
and  sugar  all  used  up,  and  an  Israelitish  creditor 
dunning;  and,  lastly,  how  Fa-ris,  not  ungrateful, 
made  a  raft  for  his  generous  visitors  to  ferry  them 
across  the  swollen  Kha-bur," — all  these  things,  and 
more,  any  one  may  read  in  Bedouin  Tribes  of  the 
Eicphrates,  vol,  i.  ch.  xv. 


CHAP.  VI.        AL    JA-ZI-RA:    OR   DESERTS  EAST   THE  EUPHRATES.  71 

apart  from  foreign  leading.  Be  all  this  as  it  may,  with  the  Ae-ni-za  kept  out  of 
AI  Ja-zi-ra  by  the  Sham-mar,  and  the  latter  so  open  to  town  influence,  another 
than  the  Turkish  Government  would  probably  ere  now  have  realised  that  a  region 
anciently  so  civilised  and  flourishing  need  not  necessarily  be  left  to  nature,  pending 
the  success  of  dubious  projects  for  the  changing  of  Bedouin  into  peasants.  In  the 
main,  and  excepting  the  limestone  ranges  of  Sin-jar  ^  (fifty  miles  long  by  seven 
broad)  and  A'bdu  '1  A'ziz,  with  between  them  the  isolated  basaltic  hill  of  Kau-kab, 
which  traverse  more  or  less  its  northern  portion,  the  whole  region  is  as  flat  and 
tractable  as  it  is  accessible.  In  October  18S6  we  marched  across  the  southern  or 
steppe  division  of  it ;  and  three  months  later,  across  the  northern.  A  country  having 
less  of  feature  than  the  former  it  would  be  hard  to  find.  Our  Arab  guide  kept 
steering  by  the  Thar-thar  wa-di ;  but  for  the  life  of  us  we  could  not  see  a  line  of  it. 
He  must  have  picked  it  out  from  the  surrounding  monotony,  in  the  same  way  as  a 
shepherd  is  said  to  know  his  sheep's  faces.  Between  Hit  and  Tak-rit,  three  and  a 
half  days  for  laden  mules,  or  say  about  eighty  miles,  no  human  vestige,  other  than, 
few  and  far  between,  the  black  tents  of  the  Sham-mar,  came  before  us.  Every- 
where was  fallow  ;  the  natural  flora  ousted  by  cultivation  thousands  of  years  ago  ; 
and  little  save  bent-grass — the  golden  him-ri — now  replacing  it.  Though  the  year's 
round  of  vegetation  was  then  only  beginning,  this  hini-ri  rose  as  high,  but  not  as 
thick,  as  barley.  It  is  fine  pasture;  but  owing  to  our  horses  being  entire  we  could 
not  turn  them  out  in  it,  as  the  Bedouin  do  their  mares.  Skins  of  Tigris  water  had 
to  be  carried  with  us  on  mules.  At  long  distances  were  wells,  with  nomad  camps 
spread  round  them  ;  deep  and  gruesome  pits,  containing,  when  not  run  dry,  scanty 
supplies  of  saline  fluid.  Frogs  and  toads  sat  blinking  in  the  sides  of  them  ;  and  in 
several  floated  dead  gazelles  which,  perhaps  to  drink,  perhaps  merely  by  accident, 
had  gone  headlong  into  them.  In  Arabic  the  word  for  watering  a  horse  or  mule 
literally  means  the  cmt-sing,  or  helping,  him  to  go  down — i.e.,  to  the  water  :  a  deriva- 
tion guiding  us  to  at  least  one  explanation  of  the  poverty  of  the  Arabian  fauna 
outside  of  certain  swampy  regions.  The  rivers  of  Al  Ja-zi-ra  are  too  deep-set  for 
animals  to  get  at  them,  except  where  an  approach,  called  a  sha-rt-d ,  has  been  made. 
At  Hit  a  town  dog  having  business  of  his  own  at  Tak-rit  joined  our  party  un- 
invited, knowing  how  dependent  he  would  be  for  water  on  some  friendly  biped 
and  his  rope  and  bucket.  As  a  feature  still  further  handicapping  Arabian  agricul- 
ture, this  very  general  depression  of  running  waters  between  steep  banks  is  notice- 
able. On  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates,  were  land  to  be  had  for  the  taking,  capital 
for  the  erection  of  water-wheels  and  purchase  of  well-cattle  is  thus  necessitated; 
and  in  so  poverty-stricken  a  country  very  little  serves  to  turn  the  cultivators  into 

1  V.  supra,  p.  5  ;  also  in  Index  I.,  art.  Ya-zi-di. 
K 


74  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  BOOK  i. 

the  bondsmen  of  Jews  and  others.  No  other  Arabian  crop  or  culture  is  so  profit- 
able as  a  date-grove.  When  planted  in  spots  like  Bussorah,  close  to  ocean  carriage, 
and  where  sweet  water  can  be  distributed  everywhere  from  the  Shattu  '1  A'rab, 
it  must  be  like  a  little  gold-mine. 

In  recrossing  Al  Ja-zi-ra  higher  up,  from  Mosul,  by  Sin-jar  and  Lake  KhS.-tu- 
ni-ya,  past  Mar-din  and  Na-si-bin  to  Bir  on  the  Euphrates,  the  best  part  was  struck 
— the  well-watered  land  N.W.  of  the  Kha-bur  river,  which  is  recognised  by  many 
as  the  true  ancient  Aram  Naharayivi,  or  Padan-armn  of  Genesis.^  By  that  time 
it  was  January,  and  plenty  of  rain  had  fallen.  All  the  arid  undulating  plain  west  of 
the  Tigris  was  spread  with  sheets  of  rain-water.  First  the  Ja-gha-jagh  was  forded; 
then,  with  difficulty,  the  Kha-bur.  The  best  known  modern  describer  of  these  parts 
is  Layard ;  ^  but  the  trees  and  thickets  which  he  gives  to  the  Kha-bur  are  now  things 
of  the  past ;  and  its  last  lion  has  either  been  hunted  down  or  has  joined  his  kindred 
in  the  impenetrable  cane-brakes  which  fringe  the  Shattu  '1  A'rab.  The  beaver  settle- 
ments have  been  exterminated  so  completely,  that  only  the  old  remember  how  once 
upon  a  time  Pashas  sent  far  and  near  for  a  certain  bitter  product  {castoreuvi)  of 
the  amphibious  sapper,  prized  by  them  as  a  restorative.  Among  Nature's  subjects 
still  remaining,  the  most  interesting  is  Asinus  onager,  or  wild  ass ;  Gur  khar  of 
Persia,  and  Kalan  of  Tatars.  He  it  is  who,  crossing  the  plain  in  small  brown 
herds,  excites  the  ardour  of  the  Sham-mar  horsemen,  and  tests  severely  their  mares' 
speed  and  bottom.  The  only  one  whose  flesh  we  ever  tasted  had  been  snared 
by  a  Sle-bi  pot-hunter  ;  not  ridden  into  by  a  straight  rider.  Numbers  of  these 
Sle-bi  cross  the  Euphrates  in  winter  in  pursuit  of  game ;  and  we  have  heard  the 
beauty  of  their  breed  of  asses  ascribed  to  their  using  as  stallions  wild  specimens. 
It  was  seen  above  how  some  have  argued  that  if  Al  Ja-zi-ra  still  have  the  wild  ass, 
why  may  it  not  once  have  had  the  wild  horse  ?  Possibly  it  may  ;  for  who  can  prove 
a  negative  ?  But  the  watered  part  of  it,  with  all  its  extensiveness,  is  relatively  to 
the  vast  arid  spaces  lying  contiguous  little  more  than  an  oasis.  The  same  tract,  as 
its  numerous  mounds  and  ruined  cities  show,  during  all  the  time  that  the  Assyrian 
empire  was  spreading  over  western  Asia,  supported  a  settled  and  industrious 
population.  Even  the  Biblical  literature  gives  us  little  help  in  realising  how 
immeasurable  are  the  past  periods  of  time ;  and  the  eighteen  Christian  centuries 
may  be  carried  back  through  eighteen,  or  twice  eighteen,  more,  without  the  problems 
of  natural  history  being  thereby  affected.  But  one  fact  at  least  appears  to  guide  us, 
and  that  is,  the  essential  difference  between  the  wild  ass's  and  the  wild  horse's  nat- 
ural habits.  The  former  is  ranked  by  the  Arabs  with  the  Antelopidae  rather  than 
the  Equidae.      In  their  poetry  he  is  held  up  to  admiration,  or  used  in  similes,  side 

^  Chap,  xxviii.  2,  et passim.  "-  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  31,  chaps.  12  to  15. 


CHAP.  VI.        AL   JA-Zl-RA:    OR    DESERTS  EAST   THE  EUPHRATES. 


75 


by  side  with  the  ostrich  and  the  camel.  As  long  as  a  succulent  bite  can  be  found,  he 
is  as  independent  of  water  as  the  hare  or  rabbit.  Notwithstanding  what  has  just 
been  said  of  the  populousness  in  ancient  times  of  this  north-western  shoulder  of  Al 
Ja-zi-ra,  we  know  from  the  figures  of  camel -riding  Arabs  found  in  its  buried 
cities  that  then,  as  now,  nomads  flitted  over  it ;  that  Sennacherib  and  his  prede- 
cessors had  to  cope  with  the  irrepressible,  ubiquitous  Bad-u  in  the  intervals  of  their 
grander  undertakings.  And  so  at  this  day,  there  falls  on  all  the  land  the  shadow 
of  the  Arab  runih  or  shal-fa — its  shaft  perhaps  an  Indian  bamboo,  perhaps  a  quiv- 
ering reed  from  the  Euphrates  marshes  ;  its  tuft  of  sable  ostrich-feathers  serving 
the  same  impressive  purpose  as  the  death's-head  and  cross-bones  device  of  a  famous 
lancer  regiment.  For  fear  of  it,  all  the  less  warlike  populations  of  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  if 
stationary,  hug  the  mountains ;  if  nomadic,  purchase  with  tribute  the  protection  of 
the  Sham-mar.  In  the  dry  months  thousands  of  the  Bedouin  assemble  between 
Sin-jar  and  Ba-tin.^  There  in  truce  times  the  Sham-mar  meet  the  Ae-ni-za ;  in  the 
natural  nomad  life  the  female  character  is  unblighted  by  face-veiling ;  hearts  go  out 
to  hearts ;  passages  of  love  and  friendship  soften  blood-feud  and  foray.  Other 
tribes,  notably  the  A'd-wan  and  the  Jais,  immigrants  like  the  Tai  from  Najd,  tend 
their  flocks  and  breed  horses  in  the  same  pastures.  Both  banks  of  the  Bi-likh, 
another  feeder  of  the  Euphrates,  are  occupied  by  the  Ba-ra-zi-ya.  The  common 
view  taken  of  these  is  that  they  are  Kurds ;  but  some  say  that  they  are  Najdian. 
One  thing  worth  mentioning  before  leaving  Al  Ja-zi-ra  is  this  :  Between  Hit  and 
Tak-rit  we  saw,  as  has  been  stated,  round  every  well  hordes  of  the  Sham-mar  with 
their  mares.  But  in  nearly  a  month  of  travel  over  the  tract  watered  by  the 
numerous  head-streams  (Rdsu  '/  diii)  of  the  Kha-bur  we  fell  in  with  even  fewer 
Bedouin  than  Sir  L.  Pelly  did  between  the  Persian  Gulf  and  Najd,  or  Lady  A. 
Blunt  in  Wa-di  Sir-han,  for  we  in  fact  saw  none  at  all.  The  margins  of  the  river 
were  white  with  flocks.  At  spring's  first  touch  a  luxuriant  growth  of  natural 
grasses,  variegated  with  flowering  herbs,  was  turning  the  desert  into  a  meadow ;  in 
the  soft  depths  of  which  the  newly  dropped  lambs  were  hidden.  But  with  grass 
and  water  everywhere,  the  Sham-mar  were  so  scattered  that  for  all  that  we  saw  of 
them  we  might  as  well  have  been  in  Yorkshire.  Perhaps,  if  our  route  had 
lain  in  peninsular  Arabia,  we  should  have  concluded  from  seeing  no  Bedouin 
or  Bedouin  horses  that  there  were  none  to  see.  But  in  Al  Ja-zi-ra  no  one  can 
fall  into  this  error.  In  1836  and  1837,  Dr  Ross,  Surgeon  to  the  British  Con- 
sulate, Baghdad,  in  the  course  of  two  journeys  to  the  Ruins  of  Al  Hadhr,^  saw  a 


1  In  nothing  is  nomad  speech  more  dehghtfully 
general  than  in  its  names  for  natural  features.  Thus 
ia-wtl,  long  or  tall,  is  as  generic  a  name  for  mountain- 
peaks  as  "  Taffy  "  is  for  Welshmen.     Similarly  every 


headland  is  a  khashm  (lit.  snout) ;  every  blunt  height, 
a  ba-iin  (lit.  bellying) ;  and  so  forth. 

2   V.  his  narrative    in   yoiirnal  Roy.    Geog.    Soc, 
Londo?t,  vol.  ix.  part  3,  1839. 


je  COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  i. 

good  deal  of  Southern  Sham-mar-land.  In  one  day's  march  he  passed  about  a 
dozen  large  encampments,  in  which  were  upwards  of  10,000  or  12,000  camels; 
yet  he  considered  that  he  had  seen  "  only  a  very  inconsiderable  part  of  this  enor- 
mous tribe."  With  the  discovery  awaiting  us  that  Bad-u  horsemanship,  though 
not  without  its  strong  points,  falls  far  short  of  the  English  hunting-field  model, 
it  is  the  more  worth  noting,  on  the  authority  of  so  matter-of-fact  a  witness,  how  in 
the  use  of  the  queen  of  weapons  for  all  who  have  taken  pains  to  master  it,  the  seat 
and  hand  and  eye  of  the  Sham-mar  lancer  serve  him  truly.  A  snake  having  started, 
a  shekhling  drove  his  spear  through  its  head.  The  Arabs  applauded,  but  the  doctor 
declared  that  it  was  an  accident.  Thereupon  the  other  threw  the  reptile  on  the 
ground  again,  saying,  "Where  will  you  have  me  hit  it  this  time?"  and  on  the 
tail  being  named  to  him,  made  a  charge  at  it,  so  that  in  an  instant  it  was  whirling 
in  the  air,  transfixed  in  the  part  in  question.  Probably  this  is  one  of  the  Bedouin 
virtues  the  decline  of  which  is  held  to  result  from  intercourse  with  townsmen  ; 
but  some  pretty  spear-play  may  still  be  seen  among  the  loose-robed  chivalry  of 
Al  Ja-zi-ra.  They  have  fallen  off  in  numbers  since  Dr  Ross's  day.  Also,  their 
war-howl  less  often  wakes  the  echoes  now  than  then.  Except  when  some  unusual 
occurrence  has  set  the  contumacious  swarms  a-buzzing,  European  travellers  have 
but  little  to  fear  in  Al  Ja-zi-ra.  Nevertheless  the  view  is  still  well  supported,  that 
while  its  towns  and  cultivated  spaces  are  held  by  the  Osmanli,  the  genii  of  the 
interior  are  the  Sham-mar. 

The  better  to  command  the  deserts  which  we  have  been  describing,  our  camp 
had  been  reduced  to  the  scale  shown  in  the  sketch  opposite.^ 

Unfortunately,  the  mistake  had  been  committed  of  employing  mules,  instead  of 
camels,  to  carry  the  baggage.  Camels  will  browse  as  they  go,  and  still  make  pro- 
gress. If  unloaded  early  enough,  in  Al  Ja-zi-ra  at  least,  they  will  do  very  well ; 
and  when  collected  at  sunset  round  the  tent,  they  sit  ruminating  contentedly,  like 
the  elders  of  a  tribe,  far  into  the  night.  But  mules  must  have  their  chopped  straw 
and  barley.  At  any  rate  their  owners  say  so  :  and  as  ours  were  not  our  own  pro- 
perty, the  slightest  mention  of  taking  them  into  places  where  rations  might  fail 
made  the  muleteers  rebellious.  Even  mares  and  horses,  especially  town  ones, 
are  not  well  adapted  for  forced  marches  over  arid  and  uninhabited  spaces.  The 
dromedary  alone  commands  the  desert.  Mounted  on  her,  the  traveller  can  go 
anywhere.  If  there  be  Bedouin  about,  he  will  find  them  ;  while  supposing  him,  after 
days  of  travelling,  to  reach  a  spot  where  he  had  thought  to  catch  them,  only  to 

1  In  towns  like  Baghdad,  the  traveller  need  anti-     [     but,  outside  of  India,  there  are  no  servants  who  under- 


cipate  no  difficulty  in  procuring  tents.  If  he  should 
desire  large  ones,  of  Turkish,  Persian,  or  Arab  shapes 
and  materials,  he  will  generally  be  able  to  buy  them  ; 


stand  how  to  pitch  a  tent  of  European  design.  If 
tentes  d'abris  will  serve  him,  the  local  tent-makers 
will  soon  equip  him. 


CHAP.  VI.        AL    JA-ZI-RA:    OR   DESERTS  EAST   THE  EUPHRATES. 


77 


discover  that  they  had  left  it,  he  has  at  least  his  wallets,  water-skin,  and  blanket ; 
and  instead  of  a  mare  almost  certainly  saddle-galled,  and  half  dead  for  want  of 
barley,  a  ruminant  fit  to  start  again  when  wanted.  A  course  of  camel-riding  in 
these  Euphrates  deserts  greatly  develops  the  foraging  faculty.  The  traveller  who 
has  reached  Baghdad  from  that  quarter  may  be  known  by  the  zeal  with  which  he 
hunts  up  provisions.  It  is  scarcely  possible  for  him  to  hear  a  hen  intimate  that 
she  has  laid  an  egg  in  his  vicinity,  without  setting  out  to  look  for  it.  When  invited 
to  dinner,  he  carries  his  empty  canisters  with  him,  and  by  a  combined  process  of 
begging  and  taking,  refills  them  from  his  hosts'  dishes  or  pantries. 


-i^         .j£. 


.;'**.  V% 


i-o**^ 


THE   AUTHORS   FLYING   CAMP   BETWEEN    SIN-JAR   AND   THE   EUPHRATES. 


78 


CHAPTER    VII. 

I'RAK:     OR    TIGRIS-LAND. 

IF  the  interest  of  Najd  for  horsemen  turns  on  the  Arabian  horse  having  been 
perfected  there,  I'rak  has  this  claim  to  notice,  that  it  yields  large  numbers  of 
him.  True,  the  I'raki,  or  as  he  is  sometimes,  though  less  appropriately,  called,  the 
Baghdad  horse,  is  not  an  Arabian  of  a  high  stamp.  Still  these  two  facts  about 
him  are  evident :  they  who  breed  him,  equally  with  their  horse  and  mare  stock, 
practically  are,  allowing  for  admixture  and  exceptions,  Arabs  ;  and  of  every  hundred 
Arabians  exported,  a  large  percentage  are  from  I'rak.  Leaving  the  animal  him- 
self for  description  in  the  proper  place,  we  therefore  now  invite  our  readers 
to  cast  an  eye  over  his  native  districts.  With  the  ancient  history  of  I'rak, 
according  to  a  venerable  tradition  one  of  the  first  countries  occupied  by  man 
after  the  deluge,  nay,  even  supposed  by  some  to  contain  the  site  of  Eden,  we 
do  not  here  occupy  ourselves.  The  Shinar  of  Genesis  ;  ^  later,  the  "  ancient  land 
of  Chaldea  "  ;  still  later  (after  its  capital),  the  "country  of  Bab-il  "  ; — the  "  I'rik 
A'ra-bi "  ^  of  geographers  may  be  said  to  fit  itself  to  the  surfaces  making  up  the 
present  Ottoman  pashaliks  of  Baghdad  and  Bussorah  ;  to  which,  however,  large 
portions  of  the  pashalik  of  Mosul  also  require  to  be  added.  In  some  curious  way 
I'r^k  has  come  to  be  called  "  Turkish  Arabia  "  :  but  no  such  name,  so  far  as  we 
know,  is  given  to  it  by  the  Bab-i-A'lt  or  Sublime  Porte. 

A  very  large  slice  of  I'rak  perhaps  admits  of  being  regarded  as  what  geogra- 
phers call  "the  further  present"  of  Al  Ja-zi-ra.^     That  is,  we  may  so  consider  the 


1  Chap.  xi.  2. 

2  So  qualified  to  distinguish  it  from  "  Frak  A'-ja- 
7)11,"  one  of  the  eleven  provinces  of  Persia. 

5  The  traveller  who  is  holding  southward  per- 
ceives after  Hit  on  the  Euphrates  and  Sa-mar-ra  on 
the  Tigris,  a  marked  difference  both  in  the  character 


of  the  ground  and  in  the  landscape.  From  a  slightly 
elevated  plain  of  secondary  formation  he  descends  to 
a  mud-flat,  the  creation  of  the  two  rivers  in  the  course 
of  ages.  "At  a  comparatively  recent  period,"  says 
Loftus,  in  Quart.  Jour.  Geol.  Soc,  1S53,  p.  251,  "the 
littoral  margin  of  the  Persian  Gulf  extended  certainly 


CHAP.  VII.  PRAK:    OR    TIGRIS-LAND.  79 

tract  beginning,  in  the  parallel  of  Hit,  where  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  approach 
within  twenty  or  thirty  miles  of  one  another,  to  diverge  again  lower  down ;  and 
stretching  south,  between  the  rivers,  towards  the  Gulf  of  Persia.     This  does  not  mean 
tiiat  I'rak  is  bounded  by  those  rivers.     Three  important  rivers,  the  Euphrates,  the 
Tigris,  and  the  Dhi-a-la,  water  it ;  but  its  limits  are  not  determined  by  them.    Accord- 
ing to  the  Arabian  geographer,  Abii  '1  Fi-da,  it  lies  on  one  of  them — the  Tigris — like 
Egypt  on  the  Nile;  that  is,  the  Tigris  runs  through  the  middle  of  it.     The  same 
authority  assigns  to  I'rak  for  boundaries,  in  the  west,  Al  Ja-zi-ra  and  Sha-mi-ya ;  in 
the  south,  the  flanks  of  Najd,  Gulf  of  Persia,  and  Khuz-istan  ;   and  in  the  east,  the 
mountainous  country  of  the  Zagros  range.^      It  is  impossible  to  apply  to  so  large  a 
tract  a  general   description,  whether  in  its  horse-breeding  or  other  aspects.     One 
thing  soon  strikes  the  horseman — the  difference  in  its  horse-supply  east  and  west 
of  the  Tigris.      In  the  former  direction,  the  further  we  go,  the  more   do  Persian 
influences    prevail    among  the   population  ;    and    Persian    strains,   or,    to    be  more 
accurate,  the  absence   of  any  particular  strain  at  all,  among  the  horses.      In  the 
latter,   the   nearer  we  approach   the  Euphrates,    the   more  we  feel  that  our  faces 
are    turned    towards    Arabia.       Over    its    steppe    portions,    I'rak    is    fiercely    hot 
from    May    to    September,    cold    and    wet    in    winter,    charming    in    spring,    and 
at  all   seasons  more   or  less   conducive   to  vigour  of  mind  and  body.      Even  the 
sedgy    swamps    of  its    southern    part,    however    distressing    to    Europeans,    main- 
tain   rice  -  growing,    fish -eating,   hardy  races,   scarcely   anywhere    to   be   surpassed 
for    breadth    of  chest    and    length    of  limb.       As    horse-breeders    these    are    not 
worth    mentioning.       Their    mare  is    the  canoe ;    their    sheep    and    camels    white- 
polled   buffaloes.     At   present    the    Government    has    them    well    in    hand.     Their 
ancient    avocation    of    fresh  -  water    pirates    is    more    or    less    suspended.       Per- 
haps   in    their    homes,    and    towards    one    another,    they    exhibit    some    traces    of 
politeness ;    but  the  aspect  which    they  present  to   strangers   is   that   of  savages. 
Closely  connected   with   the    extraordinary  productiveness    which    I'rak   displayed, 
and    with    the    high    degree    of   civilisation    which    belonged    to    it,    not    only    in 
remote  antiquity  but  partly  even  under  the  Baghdad  Caliphs,  was  the  cyclopean 
network  of  canals  by  means  of  which  the  men  of  old  converted  vast  surfaces  of  it, 
especially  between  the  rivers,  into  a  garden.     Not  a  hundredth  part  of  the  ancient 
irrigational  system  now  exists  ;  but  enough   remains  to  give  birth  in  many  places 
to  rich  crops   and  pastures.       Canals  apart,  an  enormous  deal  of  cultivation,  with 
many  hundred  miles  of  date-palm,  spreads  itself  over  the  banks  of  the  three  rivers. 


250  miles  further  to  the  north-west  than  the  present  ney  separated  the  mouths  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates, 

embouchure  of  the  Shattu  '1  A'rab."    Another  authority     I         ^  I'rak  consequently  lies  between  30°  and  34°  N.  lati- 
estiinates  that  in  Alexander's  time  at  least  a  day's  jour-     I     tude,  and  between  44°  and  48°  30'  E.  longitude. 


8o 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  I. 


Early  in  October  wheat  and  barley  are  put  down,  not  only  under  wells  and  rivers, 
but — near  towns — in  the  desert  also,  in  dependence  on  the  rain.^  By  midwinter 
the  husbandman  begins  to  be  rewarded.  With  frost  in  the  air,  and  a  wintry 
sun  looking  through  naked  trees,  irrigated  lands  are  then  knee-deep  with  crops  of 
wheat  and  barley.  These  are  not  at  first  allowed  to  come  to  ear.  They  are  either 
cut,  and  sent  in  ass-loads  to  market,  or  mares  and  cattle  are  turned  out  in  them  to 
eat  their  fill.  By  the  time  that  this  has  been  twice  or  thrice  repeated,  spring  is 
well  advanced.  Then  at  last  the  corn  is  left  to  form  and  ripen.  After  all,  the  yield 
is  ereater  than  if  it  had  never  been  eaten  down.  Our  farmers  should  make  a  note 
of  this,  and  not  be  in  too  great  a  hurry  with  their  "ware  wheats,"  when  for  all  that 
they  know  a  flight  of  fox-hunters  may  be  the  very  thing  for  them.  Beautiful  in 
I'r^k  are  March  and  April,  with  autumn's  treasures  thus  pouring  themselves  into  the 
lap  of  spring.  Vernal  showers,  expressive  of  Nature's  copiousness,  with  not  an 
ache  or  rheum  in  them,  have  succeeded  to  the  sterner  rains  of  winter.  The  days 
grow  longer  and  longer ;  and  the  genial  sun,  receiving  the  crisp  north  wind  in 
its  embraces,  produces  the  jDerfection  of  climate.^  Here  and  there  among  the 
standing  crops  sheets  of  rain-water  glisten  brighter  than  mirrors.  All  along  the 
water-courses  wild-flowers  hide  themselves  in  a  wealth  of  sweetly  scented  grasses. 
Mothers  of  every  kind  are  in  milk ;  and  near  towns,  where  the  plain  is  not 
under  crops,  it  is  studded  with  black  tent-circles.  In  good  years,  when  the  devil 
leaves  Eden  alone,  and  there  are  neither  locusts  nor  inundations.  May  sees  the 
last  field  harvested.  Then,  in  June  and  July,  the  Fraki  husbandman  is  seldom  dis- 
appointed of  a  strong  shi-vidl  or  north-west  wind.  This  does  his  winnowing  for  him  ; 
after  the  corn  has  been  trodden  out,  either  literally  under  the  feet  of  cattle,  or  by 
passing    over  it  a  spiked  wooden  roller  which   is  called  a  jar-jar?      The  simple 


^  Rain-cultivation  is  locally  called  daim  or  dcin. 

-  If  but  the  wind  would  never  veer  !  The  "  Father 
of  the  tempest"  in  I'rak  is  a  wind  called  shar-ki, 
from  the  south-east.  Nothing  could  be  more  dis- 
agreeable than  this  jarring  blustering  blast  when  it 
sets  in  cold  and  moist  (happily  only  for  a  day 
or  two  at  a  time)  in  March,  except  the  same  wind 
in  August,  when  it  comes  hot  and  humid  as  the 
sirocco,  laden  with  dust  and  yellow  vapours  ;  as  un- 
wholesome to  breathe  as  to  look  at ;  unstringing  the 
bow  of  animal  life  ;  bringing  old  wounds  and  old  pains 
back  again — nay,  making  the  joints  of  the  very  chairs 
and  tables  creak.  Men,  we  are  told,  should  never 
let  their  tempers  rise  ;  but  this  is  the  wind  to  ruffle 
them,  much  as  it  whitens  into  waves  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates.  In  towns  the  force  of  it  is  broken  ;  but 
out  in  the  desert  it  rages  round  and  round,  through 
and  through,  one's  head.     The  Arab  takes  it  patiently 


as  a  "  thing  sent,"  wraps  up  his  head,  and  says  noth- 
ing. The  European  keeps  out  of  it  as  much  as  he 
can. 

^  Thus  inevitably  the  stalks  (/z'/),  except  of  rice 
crops,  get  chopped  or  triturated  into  what  Persians 
call  kdh,  and  Arabs  tibn.  Hay,  as  we  know  it,  is 
seldom  seen  in  I'rak.  Wherever  we  have  been  among 
Arabs,  tibn  and  sha-t'r  (barley)  make  up  the  horse 
provender ;  and  these  two  words  occur  in  the  only 
slightly  varied  forms  of  te'ben  and  seo'riin  in  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Hebrew  Bible  (i  Kings  iv.  28)  in  which  a 
glimpse  is  given  of  King  Solomon's  stable  manage- 
ment. So  much  is  food  a  matter  of  habit,  that  once 
when  we  imported  to  Baghdad  for  a  growing  colt  a 
supply  of  English  meadow-hay  and  oats,  he  refused  to 
leave  his  tibn  and  s/ia-i'rfor  it !  For  lack  of  straw,  the 
method  is  in  vogue  of  spreading  the  stalls  with  sun- 
dried   droppings.      This   so  gets   into  the    coat  and 


■  CHAP.  VII. 


I'RAK:    OR    TIGRIS-LAND. 


8i 


harvest  is  barely  over  when  the  months  of  extreme  heat  begin.  Then  the  ground  is 
iron-bound.  From  an  hour  or  so  after  sunrise,  the  sportsman's  horses  stand  idle 
before  their  mangers  ;  while  his  hawks  and  thin  greyhounds  are  being  summered 
in  cool  dark  places.  In  towns  business  is  chieflj'  transacted  in  the  morning  and 
evening,  and  at  night.  For  an  hour  or  two  after  noon  the  siesta  ^  waits  on  all ; 
on  the  merchant  in  his  sard-db  or  watered  chdr-ddk ;  on  the  jDorter  stretched  atop 
his  load  ;  on  the  sentry  at  his  post.  In  the  open  country  garden  cultivation  is  con- 
tinued. For  that  the  water-wheels  of  the  Euphrates  still  revolve  ;  -  and  all  along 
the  Tigris  and  the  Dhi-a-la  ponies  draw  up  water. -^  But  agriculture  proper  is  inter- 
rupted ;  and  the  hardy  Arab  sheep,  though  still  able  to  make  a  shift  on  ground 
where  ours  would  die,  have  to  be  helped  with  chopped  straw.  All  who  have 
houses  exchange  the  open  fields  for  them.  Many  of  the  tent-dwellers  set  up 
sheds,  called  sd-bdt,  under  some  river -bank,  and  as  near  the  current  as  possible. 
Vast  portions  of  the  country  between  the  rivers  resemble  the  merest  sand -plain. 
Elf-lock  shoots  of  wild  colocynth  and  wild  caper*  stray  over  the  desert,  which 
is  rough  with  stones  and  bits  of  coloured  pottery.  But  for  the  traces  of  cities 
whose  very  names  are  lost,  nothing  could  be  more  featureless.  Where  the  Tigris 
or  the  Euphrates  bounds  the  horizon,  masses  of  date  foliage  darken  it.  Otherwise 
the  fantastic  images  of  the  mirage  ^  are  all  that  the  traveller  sees  before  him.  x'\nd 
yet  it  is  not  like  this  invariably.  The  changes  which  are  caused  perhaps  in  a 
night  by  overflowings  of  the  great  rivers  sometimes  maintain  themselves  throuo-h 
the  summer.  And  apart  from  this,  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates,  wherever  a  natural 
depression  affords  an  opening,  send  into  it  a  body  of  running  water,  which  is 
called  a  khirr.     Streams  of  this  kind  do  not  go  far ;  but  many  of  them  last  all 


mane  that,  with  but  one  groom  to  three  or  four 
horses,  in  Arabia  one's  favourites  may  be  heahhy, 
but  they  can  hardly  be  clean.  Horses  doing  daily 
marches  have  to  lie  on  the  bare  ground.  If  tibtt 
were  put  down  as  bedding  the  wind  would  blow  it 
away. 

^  In  Arabic  kai-li'i-la.  The  Prophet  said,  Sleep 
at  mid-day  J  verily  the  devils  sleep  not. 

2  A  great  feature  of  the  Euphrates  is  the  water- 
wheel,  called  from  its  creaking  na-iVr.  The  bed  of 
the  river  being  first  of  all  raised  by  the  nmning  into 
it  of  dams  of  masonry,  the  water-power  of  several 
feet  in  height  thus  obtained  is  made  to  turn  a  rough 
wooden  wheel  of  30  or  40  feet  diameter,  having  100 
or  150  rude  clay-cups  slung  on  the  outer  edge.  The 
aqueducts  with  which  these  wheels  are  fitted  form 
not  the  least  picturesque  part  of  them,  being  for  the 


most  part  supported  by  a  series  of  well-built  Gothic 
arches. 

^  The  nd-2i'7-  cannot  be  put  on  the  Tigris  and  the 
Dhi-a-Ia,  owing  to  the  softness  of  their  beds. 

■*  In  old  Arabic  la-saf  (Heb.  iiispali,  S)'r.  nespa). 
But  now  the  Arabs  call  it  ka-bar.  That  is,  the  Greek 
name  KctTTTrapis  has  displaced  the  Semitic  one. 

"  In  Arabic  sa-rdb.  More  deceitful  than  the  sa-rab 
is  an  Arab  saying.  I'rak  is  seldom  rained  on  be- 
tween June  and  October.  The  drier  the  atmo- 
sphere the  more  remarkable  the  mirage.  The  air- 
strata,  unequally  heated,  and  therefore  differing  in 
rarity,  in  refracting  the  rays  of  light,  here  distort  the 
objects  seen  through  them  ;  there  make  them  appear 
raised  off  the  ground  ;  and  again  by  a  reproduction  of 
their  image  which  is  reflected  in  a  lower  stratum, 
present  them  as  if  rising  up  out  of  a  lake. 


82 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


through  the  hot  months  ;  and  fishermen  sail  up  and  down  them  in  Httle  skifis. 
Delicate  and  nutritious  grasses  ^  spring  up  wherever  the  moisture  reaches.  When 
the  khirr  dries  up  towards  September,  cultivators  raise  in  it  heavy  crops  of 
beans  or  Ifi-bia,  the  very  best  of  horse-keep.  More  considerable  than  the  khirr 
are  the  marsh  {Iiaui')  and  salt-lake  {sab-kha),  many  of  which  yield  saline  herb- 
age almost  as  good  as  barley  for  horses.-  All  that  has  so  far  been  said  applies  in 
the  main  to  I'rak  west  of  the  Tigris.  East  of  the  same  river,  between  it  and  the 
Turco-Persian  frontier,  lies  a  pastoral  steppe  called  Al  Ha-wi-ja,  or,  from  its  occu- 
pants, Ha-wi-jahi  7  U'-baid.  Arabia  contains  as  many  hd-ivis  and  ha-wi-jas  as 
India  does  do-dbs,  or  England  holms.  Both  are  geographical  terms,  descriptive 
of  certain  conformations  or  dispositions  of  land.  Their  etymology  being  obscure, 
the  two  names  are  difficult  of  definition  ;  but  generally  they  seem  to  indicate  mud- 
flats. With  regard  to  the  Ha-wi-ja  now  before  us,  a  glance  at  the  map  will  show 
that,  while  divided  by  a  range  of  low  mountains  into  a  northern  and  southern  por- 
tion, it  is  much  enclosed  by  rivers.  Unlike  the  Euphrates,  which,  after  receiving  in 
its  upper  third  the  Bi-likh  and  the  Khi-bur,  holds  on  for  some  800  miles  without  an 
important  affluent  joining  it ;  the  sister  Tigris  is  enriched  at  every  stage  by  snow-fed 
and  considerable  tributaries,  notably  the  greater  and  lesser  Zab,  the  U'-dhaim,  and  the 
Dhi-a-la.  Between  two  of  these,  the  lesser  Zab  and  the  U'-dhaim,  lies  the  territory  of 
the  U'-baid,  the — in  the  main — desert  oi  Al  Ha-ivi-ja.  In  November  1886  the  part 
of  this  called  Al  A'ith  was  wandered  over  by  us  without  a  fixed  abode  appearing. 
All  the  features  of  the  ground  were  Najdian.  He  who  has  crossed  its  billowy  sands, 
scourged  by  the  prevailing  winds  into  elevated  masses  and  intermitting  spiral  ridges, 
with  here  and  there  in  the  rainy  months  surfaces  of  nti-st  pasture,  may  almost  con- 
sider that  he  has  seen  Najd  itself  In  1856  clouds  of  apparently  ensanguined  sand 
were,  for  the  first  time  that  any  one  remembered  such  a  thing,  blown  into  Baghdad 
day  after  day  by  the  strong  winds  of  the  desert.  As  English  gunboats  were  just 
then  pounding  Mu-ham-ma-ra,  the  red  material  alarmed  the  superstitious.     Some 


1  In  A.\-3.h\c  gree?i-food  \s  ha-shtsh.  Grasses  such  as 
those  of  which  we  make  hay  are  i'shbj  among  which  is 
ihaz-yil,  the  dub  of  Northern,  and  hariyali  of  Soutliern, 
lnA\3i,  A grestis  li?tearis  of  botanists.  Spreading  from 
point  to  point  both  below  and  above  the  ground,  loving 
the  shade,  yet  not  fearing  the  sun,  this  grass,  wher- 
ever it  may  have  come  from  originally,  has  so  spread 
over  east  and  west,  that  we  have  lieard  Turkish  Pashas 
bitterly  call  it  an  emblem  of  the  British  power  !  Long 
may  it  continue  to  be  so. 

Another  I'raki  grass  is  the  dmc-sar,  a  kind  of  wild 
oat,  fresh  and  beautiful  to  look  at,  and  much  liked  by 


horses ;  not,  however,  yielding  a  grain. 

Outside  the  natural  flora  are  innumerable  cultivated 
herbs.  The  tall  bean  (bd-kil-la)  diversifies  with  its 
dark  green  the  wheat  and  barley  fields.  The  grace- 
ful hicr-tu-mdn,  an  excellent  horse-keep,  comes  up 
half-wild  along  with  it ;  and  later  on  the  mash,  type 
of  the  vetch  family. 

^  This  applies  particularly  to  the  i^k-rish,  mispro- 
nounced ifsh-rish — a  saltish  herb  lying  close  to  the 
ground,  having  on  it  rough  capsules  like  very  small 
grapes.  An  inexhaustible  supply  of  this  is  brought 
into  I'raki  towns  in  the  hot  months. 


CHAP.   VII. 


PRAK:    OR    TIGRIS-LAND. 


S3 


say  that  it  came  down  the  Tigris  valley  from  Al  A'ith.  But  if  there  be  red  sand- 
dunes  in  Al  Ha-wi-ja,  we  did  not  see  them.  For  many  years,  the  wells  and 
pastures  of  Al  A'ith  have  been,  by  the  favour  of  the  U'-baid,  in  the  possession 
of  the  purely  Bedouin  tribe  of  Sa-yih,  a  sept  driven  by  family  quarrels  across  the 
Tigris,^  and  these  were  found  by  us  leading  the  Najdian  life ;  rich  in  mares  and 
camels,  and  prone  to  foray.  The  horse-stock  both  of  the  U'-baid  and  Sa-yih  will 
be  looked  at  in  another  chapter.  Al  Ha-wi-ja,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  a  fine  natural 
horse-run ;  indeed  the  reader  may  be  inclined,  from  much  of  what  has  just  been 
stated,  to  form  the  same  opinion  of  I'rak  generally.  But  there  are  many  things 
to  handicap  the  Baghdad  province  under  the  existing  rdgime  in  this  respect ;  and 
although  it  would  hardly  do  to  consider  every  horse  reared,  or  even  got  and 
foaled,  in  I'rak  an  Traki,  yet  the  local  horse-stock  is  so  inferior  that  one  cannot 
but  regret  the  fact  of  so  much  of  it  passing  in  distant  countries  as  typical  of 
Arabia's  better  strains. 

As  a  rule,  the  Bedouin  proper,  when  they  enter  I'-rak,  avoid  long  sojourns  in 
it.     But  considerable  bodies  of  the  Ae-ni-za,  notably  the  Ibn   Hadh-dhal,  are  more 
and  more  tending  to  make  it  their  di-ra.     It  is  a  fine  thing  for  a  fighting  horde  of  the 
Ha-mad  thus  to  possess  a  special  desert,  into  which,  through  fear  of  the  Bao-hdad 
Government,  their  enemies  can  scarcely  follow  them.     The  present  Head  of  these 
Hadh-dhal  Arabs,   Shekh  Fahd,  even  has  a  title  and   stipend  from  the  Osmanli ; 
and  owns,  though  he  seldom  occupies,  a  house  in  Kar-ba-la.      In  September  and 
October  he  and   his   kindred  swarm   like   locusts  out  of  Sha-mi-ya   towards  culti- 
vated parts ;  and  set  up  their  blanket  cities  in  the  pastures  west  of  the  Euphrates, 
between    Kar-ba-la  and    Raz-za-za.       Nominally,    they    come    to    buy  dates ;    but 
their  camps  form  great  camel -markets,  which  attract  crowds  of  buyers.       In  fact, 
the   Ibn   Hadh-dhal,    though   there  is   no  better   blood   in   the  Ae-ni-za,  are  every 
year  taking  on  more  of  the  character  of  horse  and  camel  sellers.       It  is  not  so 
to   the  same  extent,   perhaps,   with  their  natural  enemies,   the  Sham-mar.       They, 
too,   sell  their  colts  as  they  go;    but    their    first  thought    is   to    "see   what    God 
will  give  them" — i.e.,   make  free   on   every  opportunity  with   other  people's  pro- 
perty.     Lower  down  the  Euphrates  on  the  same  side,  round  Suku  'sh  Shu-yukh 
and  Zu-bair,  another  Bedouin  nation,  the  Najdian  Dha-fir,  has  its  pastures.      But 
speaking  broadly,  excluding  birds  of  passage,  and  allowing  for  exceptions,  the  horse- 
breeding  peoples  of  the  Tigris  are  of  the  most  mixed  description.     A  list  of  them 


*  A  refugee  tribe,  or  part  of  a  tribe,  thus  attaching 
itself  to  another  and  possibly  hostile  tribe  is  called 
ga-sir.      Fragments   of   the    Sham-mar    always    are 


ga-sir  with  the  Ae-ni-za,  and  vice  versa;  and  this  is 
one  of  many  other  ways  in  which  the  several  strains 
of  horses  are  carried  hither  and  thither. 


84 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK    I. 


would  fill  a  gazetteer:  the  best  known  group  -  names  are  those  given  below.  ^ 
Many  are  Bedouin  by  descent,  and  all  but  equally  so  by  occupation  —  warlike, 
predatory,  restless.  Others,  though  settled,  are  able,  OAving  to  the  inaccessibility 
of  their  haunts,  to  hold  themselves  safe  from  interference.  Vast  numbers  are 
little  else  than  peasants ;  milch  cows  of  the  Government ; "  a  prey  to  all  stronger 
than  themselves ;  but  not  without  some  power  of  biting  when  too  roughly  handled 
by  officialdom.  Both  extremes  alike,  including  all  the  intermediate  stages  and 
gradations,  are  looked  down  on  by  Bedouin  whose  tails  have  escaped.  Even 
when  a  common  origin  is  admitted,  the  view  taken  is  that  of  Rob  Roy's  wife 
when  she  asked  the  "Bailie"  if  a  "stream  of  rushing  water  acknowledged  any 
relations  with  the  portion  withdrawn  from  it  for  the  mean  domestic  uses  of  those 
who  dwelt  on  its  banks  ? "  This  is  all  very  well  among  the  Bedouin ;  but  it  is  a 
mistake  when  civilised  people  push  the  same  fancy  too  far.  For  all  whose  proper 
concern  it  is  to  keep  the  life  of  the  desert  on  its  pristine  lines,  the  utmost  possible 
stiffening  of  the  bristles  may  be  advisable.  But,  this  admitted,  the  European  surely 
has  no  call  to  conclude  that  sixteen  quarterings  of  Najdian  blood  count  for  nothing, 
as  soon  as  a  tribe  takes  to  raising  crops  and  contributing  to  the  Government 
treasury.  Notwithstanding  the  caution  given  above  against  regarding  I'rak  as 
demarcated  by  any  river,  the  fact  already  stated  may  be  remembered,  that,  in  respect 
of  the  character  of  the  people  spread  along  it,  the  Tigris  is  far  less  Arabian  than 
the  Euphrates.  The  latter,  in  entering  I'rak  near  Hit,  strikes  too  decidedly  east- 
ward to  retain  much   further  connection  with  the  pastures    of  the  Ae-ni-za  ;    but 


1  Bai-at,  E.  of  Tigris,  between  Duz  Khur-ma-tu  and 
Kif-ri.     Of  Turanian,  not  Arab,  stock. 

Ba-nii  Lam,  E.  of  Tigris,  from  Kut  to  Persian  frontier. 
W".  of  Tigris,  S.E.  of  the  Hai.     Najdian  origin. 

Da-war,  same  ground  generally  as  Sham-mar  Toga  ; 
guides  and  messengers. 

Du-laim,  v.  p.  135. 

I'-ma-ra,  pi.  I'-mi-rat,  N.  and  S.  of  Hai  river,  formerly 
one  of  the  most  considerable  nations  in  I'rak. 

Ju-biar,  W.  of  Tigris,  tract  called  Ta-ji,  between  Bagh- 
dad and  Tall  Gush.  Cattle-breeders  and  horse- 
dealers. 

Kha-za-i'l,  Lower  Sha-mi-ya,  S.W.  of  Sa-ma-wa,  march- 
ing with  Mun-ta-fik.  Those  having  neither  camels 
nor  mares,  cultivate  ;  those  better  off,  raid  on  their 
neighbours.  Carriers  and  camel-dealers.  Numbers 
of  their  colts  are  taken  every  year  to  India. 

Mi'-dan,  chiefly  round  I'-ma-ra.  Live  in  huts  of  reeds. 
Have  enormous  herds  of  buffaloes. 

Mun-ta-fik,  v.  p.  135. 

Sar-ra-e,  between  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  S.E.  of  Hai 
river  as  far  as  the  Hid. 

Sham-mar  Toga,  plains  E.  of  Tigris  and  S.  of  Dhi-a-la 


to  Kut.  With  them  the  Di-fa-fa'.  Branch  of  them 
the  Bij  Mu-ham-mad  ;  filling"  marshes  N.  of  Gurna 
as  far  as  Hid  river.  Propellers  of  canoes  {jiia-shd- 
Mf).  Resembling  them  as  living  in  huts  and  breed- 
ing buffaloes,  but  of  better  stock,  and  more  peace- 
able, are  the  Ja-za-ir  inhabiting  the  marshy  districts 
of  the  Euphrates. 
U'-baid,  from  E.  bank  of  Tigris  to  Him-rin  hills,  and 
round  Kar-kuk.  Ancient  lineage  ;  rich  in  mares 
and  camels. 
Zu-baid,  a  great,  if  mixed,  people,  between  Tigris  and 
Euphrates,  N.  of  the  Hai  to  Sak-li-wi-ya  canal, 
W.N.W.  of  Baghdad. 

Add  to  the  above  a  very  large  Kurdi  element,  in 
every  stage  between  settled  and  nomadic. 

^  In  I'rik,  Government  takes  a  sheep-tax  (called  ko- 
dd)  in  money,  at  so  much  per  head,  and  a  similar  one 
(called  ixja-di)  on  camels.  On  crops  a  tenth,  or  what- 
ever it  may  be,  is  taken  in  kind.  Whei'ever  a  patch  of 
cultivation  shows  itself,  down  upon  it,  sooner  or  later, 
swoops  a  revenue  officer,  when  the  locusts  are  not 
beforehand  with  him. 


CHAP.  Yli.  PRAK:    OR    TIGRIS-LAND.  85 

this  is  more  and  more  made  up  for,  the  nearer  that  it  approaches  the  flanks  of 
Najd.  Even  so  high  up  as  Hit,  a  great  and  aristocratic  Bedouin  people,  preserving 
much  of  the  old  manners,  occupies  both  its  banks.  These  are  the  Du-laim  or 
Di-Iem,  not  long  ago  nomadic  and  strictly  pastoral,  but  now  half-way  between 
that  phase  and  the  agricultural.  The  tribal  form,  with  its  essential  "  touch  one 
touch  all "  organisation,  is  still  indeed  illustrated  by  them.  A  few  years  ago  the 
irresistible  tendency  to  stand  by  a  friend  drew  them  into  a  raid  on  the  Sham-mar. 
Contrary  to  Arab  usage,  much  blood  was  spilt ;  and  the  Du-laim,  besides  being 
defeated,  were  called  most  severely  to  account  by  the  Baghdad  Government. 
When  they  ride  abroad  it  is  still  on  blood-mares,  with  tufted  spear  on  shoulder ; 
and  their  hom.e  is  still  in  open  spaces.  But  mule  -  breeding  is  on  the  increase 
among  them,  and  horse-breeding  on  the  decline ;  the  plough  more  and  more  attracts 
them  ;  and  sheds  rise  up  beside  their  tents.  Descending  the  Euphrates,  we  soon 
enter  the  country  of  the  Mun-ta-fik.  These  expand  over  both  sides  of  the  river, 
from  Sa-ma-wa  to  the  Gulf.  On  the  Tigris,  they  possess  the  tracts  which  are  crossed 
by  the  rivers  Hid  and  Hai.  Fifty  years  ago,  the  Arab  settlement  of  Suku  'sh 
Shu-yukh,  or  Market  of  the  Shekhs,  near  Gurna,  which  had  grown  up  in  connection 
with  them,  was  a  great  centre  of  trade  ;  but  now  it  is  close  upon  collapse.  The  Ae- 
ni-za  say  that  the  clans  of  the  lower  Euphrates  are  not  sufficiently  careful  to  ascer- 
tain the  pedigree  of  a  horse  or  mare  before  they  breed  from  it ;  and  that  many  of 
their  mares  are  no  better  than  those  of  the  half-Persian  Ka'b  whose  seats  are  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  Shattu  '1  A'rab.  To  some  extent  this  may  be  so  ;  but  the 
Mun-ta-fik  are  too  near  Najd,  and  their  connection  with  it  is  too  intimate,  for  them 
to  be  left  without  a  certain  number  of  pure-bred  mares  and  stallions.  Buyers  from 
Zu-bair  and  Bussorah  take  away  their  colts  ;  and  India  receives  many  good  Arab 
horses  from  this  source.  Osmanli  influences  have  been  unsparingly  exercised  to 
weaken  the  bond  which  unites  these  people  ;  and  in  some  respects  they  now  are  in  a 
somewhat  shattered  condition.  But  the  warlike  Arab  spirit  which  they  inherit  is  as 
strong  as  ever ;  and  their  interminable  rice-fields  and  date-groves,  added  to  their 
wealth  in  sheep  and  camels,  serve  to  keep  them  in  the  foreground.  The  approaches 
to  the  Arabian  littoral  in  this  quarter,  though  not  unguarded  by  the  establishments  of 
the  distant  central  authority  at  Constantinople,  are  largely  in  the  keeping  of  survivals 
like  the  Du-laim  and  the  Mun-ta-fik,  whose  vitality  it  seems  impossible  to  crush. 
To  reach  eastern  Arabia  by  the  open  water-ways,  and  seize  the  towns  of  the  sea- 
board, is  an  enterprise  within  the  capacity  of  any  foreign  power  possessing  naval 
superiority.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  defeat  mercenaries,  and  a  very  different  thing  to 
be  confronted  by  chieftains  who,  although  destitute  of  what  we  should  regard  as 
military  forces,  hold  in  their  hands  the  resources  of  important  districts,  and  are 
possessed  of  singular  ability.     When  recently  enjoying  the  hospitality  of  one  of  the 


S6 


COUNTRY  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   I. 


proudest  ot  the  Mun-ta-fik  patriarchs,  we  more  than  ever  realised  the  difficukies  which 
would  beset  the  European  commander  who  should  be  called  upon  temporarily  to  estab- 
lish his  authority,  and  pass  on  troops  from  base  to  base,  in  these  immense  regions. 
We  do  not  know  how  many,  or  how  few,  staff-officers  who  are  able  to  speak  to  the 
Arabs  in  their  own  language,  and  interpret  to  others  their  characteristic  traits  and 
sentiments,  would  be  available  in  such  circumstances.  But  if  ever  it  come  to  pass 
that,  for  want  of  such  assistance,  military  chiefs  are  compelled  to  rely,  in  their  Intelli- 
gence and  Supply  departments,  on  the  legion  of  Levantines  and  I'-ra-kis  who,  on  the 
grounds  of  their  speaking  English,  or  French,  and  Arabic,  will  proffer  their  services, 
very  great  difficulties  will  be  experienced. 


IN   THE  author's   GARDEN,    BAGHDAD. 


BOOK     SECOND 
THE     BREEDERS     OF    THE     ARABIAN 


CHAPTER    I. 


THE  HORSEMAN  MAKES  THE  HORSE. 


HE  moment  that  we  leave  the  domain  of  Nature,  and  notice  domestic 
breeds  of  animals,  man's  share  in  the  making  and  moulding  of  them 
demands  attention.  He  who  would  see  a  horse,  for  example,  which 
should  be  wholly  a  product  of  climate,  must  necessarily  catch  a  wild 
one.^  Even  the  ponies  which  run  in  mobs  in  certain  islands,  though  their  owners 
may  have  but  little  to  do  with  breeding  them,  at  least  receive  protection. 


No  picture  has  come  down  of  the  horses  of  the  cavalry  and  scythe-bearing 
chariots  which  the  Romans  encountered  when  they  invaded  Britain.  But  from 
the  descriptions  of  their  prowess  in  Ceesar  and  Tacitus,  it  is  safe  to  infer  that 
they  showed  bi'eeding :  that  if  climate  made  the  web  of  them,  the  woof  was 
shaped  by  the  methods  used  to  bring  them  to  the  proper  standard,  chiefly  through 
the  selection  of  parents,  but  also  in  the  individual  by  means  of  work  and  training. 


1  With  reference  to  the  theory  that  the  Horse's 
primeval  home  Ues  about  the  40th  degree  of  lati- 
tude on  the  highlands  of  Asia,  we  took  advantage  in 
1886  of  an  adjoining  region  being  under  inspection 
by  representatives  of  the  Englishman  and  Slav — the 
two  rival  branches  of  the  Aryan  race — to  inquire  of 
a  scientific  friend,  Surgeon  Owen,  CLE.,  medical 
officer  with  the  "  Boundary  Commission,"  whether  any 
facts  bearing  on  this  point  had  been  seen  or  heard  of. 
His  answer  was  that,  although  in  the  localities  visited 
by  the  Commission  wild  horses  had  not  been  seen, 
yet  there  were  indications  of  the  present  existence  of 
distinctly  wild  or  aboriginal  horses  in  Mongolia — that 
is,  be  it  observed,  the  very  region  whence,  eight  cen- 
turies ago,  Jenghis  Kaan — the  Bonaparte  of  the  East- 
ern world — carried  the  Mongol  arms,  chiefly  by  means 
of  clouds  of  horseinen,  from  the  China   sea   to   the 


banks  of  the  Dnieper.  As  his  authority  in  part,  Dr 
Owen  quoted  his  companion,  Mr  Ney  Elias,  who 
traversed  in  1872  a  line  of  upwards  of  2000  miles, 
through  the  almost  unknown  tracts  of  western  Mon- 
golia, from  the  gate  in  the  great  wall  of  Kalghan  to  the 
Russian  frontier  in  the  Altai.  In  Sir  Douglas  Forsyth's 
report  on  his  mission  to  Yarkand  it  is  stated  that  herds 
of  wild  horses  (also  wild  camels)  had  been  seen,  not, 
indeed,  by  Sir  Douglas,  but  by  a  native  informant,  in 
Northern  Thibet.  The  country  in  question  highly 
favours  the  natural  habit  of  the  horse  ;  and  from  pre- 
historic down  to  recent  times  it  has  been  famous  for 
the  excellence  and  numbers  of  its  studs.  Vide  Marco 
Polo,  Col.  Yule's  [1S75]  edit,  ch.  Ixi.  (vol.  i.  p.  291). 
In  ch.  liv.,  Ser  Marco  says,  that  the  Tatar  horses  "will 
subsist  entirely  on  the  grass  of  the  plains,  so  that  there 
is  no  need  to  carry  store  of  barley,  straw,  or  oats." 


M 


90 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  II. 


The  subjoined  tableau  from  the  famous  roll  of  12th-century  embroidery  which, 
from  having  been  piously  presented  to  the  cathedral  of  Bayeux,  is  known  as  the 
"  Bayeux  tapestry,"  represents  the  horse  and  man-at-arms  with  which  Norman 
William  hammered  Britons,  Teutons,  Danes,  and  other  elements  into  a  great 
nation  ;  when  the  armour  was  as  yet  comparatively  light ;  and  war-steeds  were 
not  required  to  carry  figures   resembling  our  modern  ironclads. 


WILLIAM   I.    AND   TONSTAIN. 


Where  are  now  the  stamps  of  horses  which  England  possessed  at  the  period 
of  the  Conquest  ?     Where  the  square-set  and  untiring  hackney,  shaped  like  this, 


(=) 


CHAP.  I.  777^   HORSEMAN  MAKES    THE   HORSE. 


91 


on  which  our  grandfathers  covered  the  Great  Northern  Road?  Or  the  "  bonnie 
black  mares "  of  the  gentlemen  who  so  often  stopped  them  ?  Or,  to  name  no 
more,  the  pack-horses  of  which  the  goods  trains  of  long  ago  were  formed  ? — 

"  How  are  they  blotted  from  the  things  that  be  !  "  ^ 

is  the  epitaph  of  them  all.  In  this,  as  in  other  respects,  old  fashions  have 
but  given  place  to  new  :  in  the  picture-gallery  opposite,  the  characteristics  and 
pursuits  of  Englishmen  are  reflected  in  their  horses  as  completely  as  they  were 
in  those  of  long  ago.  The  same  thing  has  come  to  pass  in  other  countries 
also.  A  century  ago,  Hindustan  yielded  breeds  of  horses  second  to  none  in 
stamina.  Those  were  the  days  of  free  fighting ;  when  hordes  of  mounted 
marauders  swept  the  peninsula  ;  when  a  blood  mare  might  easily  carry  a  shep- 
herd or  a  slipper-bearer  to  the  highest  station;  and  when  the  true- uses  of  light 
cavalry  were  understood  as  they  have  seldom  been  in  Europe.  Gradually  all  this 
was  arrested  by  the  growth  of  the  British  power.  Their  occupation  gone,  the  old 
breeds  then  found  their  bourne  on  the  other  side  of  what  some  one  has  well  called 
the  "  unjumpable  Styx."  In  other  lands,  they  would  merely  have  taken  on  differ- 
ent forms.  But  unhappily  among  Indians  generally  there  is  no  chord  responsive 
to  the  epithet  of  "horseman,"  which  is  as  clear  to  Englishmen  as  "horse-com- 
pelling" was  to  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  In  India  all  the  ploughing,  and  a 
great  deal  of  the  roadwork,  are  carried  on  by  means  of  bullocks.  And  thus,  in 
spite  of  much  encouragement  from  Government,  that  country  is  now  at  a  disad- 
vantage in  respect  of  the  production  of  superior  horses  ;  compared  with  countries 
where  colts  are  bred  and  reared  at  slight  expense  from  the  mares  that  work  the 
farm,  take  the  farmer  to  church  and  market,  or  occasionally  even  give  him  a  look 
at  the  hounds. 

All  this  is  intended  to  illustrate  how,  next  to  climate — in  highly  civilised  coun- 
tries possibly  even  beyond  and  above  it — 'tis  the  man  and  the  work  that  make  the 
horse  :  and  this  view  is  so  essential,  that  before  in  due  time  proceeding  to  consider 
the  Arab  horse,  we  wish  to  devote  the  following  three  chapters  to  the  breeders  of 
him  ;  both  the  AJil  bait,  or  tent-folk,  and  the  Aid  hd-yit,  or  people  of  boundaries. 

^  Scott,  in  The  Lady  of  the  Lake. 


92 


CHAPTER    II. 

WHERE    DID    THE    ARABS    COME    FROM? 

ALL  have  heard  of  Queen  EHzabeth's  gunner,  who,  when  he  was  called  to 
account  for  not  having  fired  a  salute,  gave  twenty  reasons,  the  last  of  which 
was  that  he  had  no  powder !  Not  to  follow  suit,  our  best  reason  for  failing  in  the 
sequel  to  answer  the  above-stated  question  may  be  given  at  the  outset,  and  that  is 
inability  to  do  so.  The  discussion  of  it  seems  to  suggest  more  difficulties  than 
it  solves.  For  example,  the  following.  In  all  the  "fragments  of  an  earlier  world" 
which  lie  imbedded  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  by  what  test  are  the  substantial  and 
permanent  to  be  distinguished  ?^  In  what  degree  are  we  to  consider  the  Hebrews 
and  Arabs — so  constantly  in  touch  historically — inter-related  ethnically  ?  How  far 
back  falls  the  epoch  when  the  Semite^  consolidation,  disintegrating,  spread  its 
portions,  now  spoken  of  as  Arabs,  Aramaeans,  Canaanites,  Hebrews,  Assyrians,  Baby- 
lonians, and,  lastly,  the  Ge'ez,  or  Abyssinians,  over  the  several  spaces  which  now 
contain  them  ?  Does  Arabia  proper,  or  Babylonia,  or  any  other  region  where  they 
are  historically  known  to  us,  form  the  primitive  seat  of  the  Semitic  peoples  ?  Or 
came  they  as  masterful  immigrants  from  some  nursery  of  nations  outside  of  their  pres- 
ent limits  ?  Lastly,  of  all  the  Semitic  tongues,  which  holds  the  same  position  towards 
the  others  that  Sanscrit  does  in  the  Aryan  family  of  speech  ?  We  do  not  mean 
that  all,  or  any,  of  these  formidable  questions  now  await  us.  Most  of  them, 
we  believe,  are  still  undetermined.  If  we  at  least  were  to  go  into  them,  the  very 
ancient  Eastern  figure  of  diving  into  an  ocean  and  bringing  up  a  potsherd  would 


1  F.  p.  113,  infra,  f.n.  i. 

2  With  reference  to  the  term  Semite  or  Slieiiiiic,  the 
general  reader  may  be  glad  of  the  information  that  it 
was  first  introduced  (1787)  under  the  impression  that 
the  division  of  mankind,  so  far  as  known  to  the  Jews, 
in  Gen.  x.,  made  most  of  the  nations  to  whom  it  was 
applied  descendants  of  Shem,  the  son  of  Noah.  It  is 
now  known  that  the  classification  in  question,  what- 


ever facts  of  political  history  or  civilisation  may  be 
adumbrated  in  it,  is  neither  ethnographic  nor  geo- 
graphic. Nevertheless,  for  want  of  a  scientific  term, 
the  universally  received  names  "  Semites "  and 
"  Semitic "  continue  to  be  borne  by  those  nations 
collectively  ;  and  by  the  languages,  some  living  and 
some  dead,  which  are  proper  to  them. 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE   DID    THE  ARABS   COME  FROM? 


93 


find  one  more  illustration.  Why,  then,  it  may  be  asked,  the  present  chapter  ? 
First,  because  the  differences  between  the  settled  and  nomadic  Arabs  cannot  be 
elucidated  apart  from  references  to  ethnology ;  in  connection  with  which  the  pre- 
ceding general  statement  may  prove  useful.  Secondlj',  because  in  speaking  of  the 
origin  of  the  Arabs  we  shall  have  an  opportunity  of  stating  certain  facts  about  the 
Bedouin  which  most  readers  will  find  interesting. 


Among  the  views  of  the  Arab  horse  dealt  with  in  previous  chapters,  one  was 
that  of  his  being  indigenous  to  Arabia,  in  a  sense  in  which  the  English  horse  is  not 
indigenous  to  England  ;  and  another,  that  the  pedigree  of  every  genuine  specimen 
of  him  issues  pure  and  undefiled  from  some  mysterious  source.  The  unreason- 
ableness of  the  former  theory  was  then,  let  us  hope,  demonstrated ;  while  the  latter 
was  reserved  for  consideration  in  its  proper  place.  We  have  not  yet  come  to 
that :  meanwhile  we  wish  to  mention  two  more  or  less  similar  views  with  respect 
to  the  Arab  man.  The  first  is,  the  claim  to  purity  of  race  in  a  very  special  sense 
which  every  Arab,  at  any  rate  every  Bedouin,  asserts  for  himself.  The  second, 
the  vague  belief  prevailing  that  the  ancient  Arabs,  while  yielding  numerous  colonies, 
owed  to  the  isolation  of  their  peninsula  a  singular  degree  of  freedom  from  foreign 
intrusion,  and  consequent  race  admixture.  The  latter  opinion,  it  will  soon  appear, 
is  not  remote  from  the  subject  which  is  chiefly  to  occupy  us  in  this  chapter — 
the  history  of  the  Bedouin,  considered  separately  from  the  whole  body  of  the 
Arabs  both  nomadic  and  settled.  Before  passing  on  to  that,  if  we  slightly  illus- 
trate the  individual  Arab's  claim  to  sangre  azul,  our  remarks  will  not  seem  too 
irrelevant,  when  the  Bedouin  practice  of  horse-breeding  afterwards  comes  under 
notice. 

One  of  the  pearls  of  wisdom  which  the  JMuslim  ascribe  to  their  Prophet  is,  Pre- 
serve [commit  to  memory]  of  genealogies  only  as  muck  as  tuill  keep  ptire  your  line} 
How  far  such  an  admonition  was  needed,  and  how  far  it  has  been  followed,  are 
nice  questions.  The  world  contains  no  greater  recounters  of  pedigrees  than 
the  Arabs;  but  the  "fatal  facility"  with  which  their  handed  -  down  material 
lends  itself  to  the   myth-making    process   is   anything    but    a    satisfactory  feature. 


1  V.  f.n.  3,  p.  20,  aji/e.  Mr  Stanley  Lane  Poole,  in  a 
little  book  (1882)  about  Muhammad,  calls  his  'Say- 
ings '  '  Table  Talk.'  To  which  a  captious  critic  might 
offer  the  t:\'0  objections  :  that  the  Arab  siif-ra — 
merely  a  skin  spread  on  the  ground — is  not  a  table; 
and  that  eating,  not  talking,  is  the  business  to  which 


Arabs  and  all  primitive  Asiatics  address  themselves 
at  meal-times.  Certain  non- Muslim  relics  of  the 
ancient  Semite  population  of  Babylonia,  whose  sect- 
name  is  Mandeeans,  even  have  the  superstition  that 
evil  spirits  live  on  food  which  they  snatch  from  before 
talkative  people. 


94  THE  BREEDERS   OF  THE  ARABIAN.  book  ii. 

After  the  Prophet's  death  Islamic  piety  constructed  for  him  a  family-tree  con- 
necting him  through  upwards  of  forty  descents  with  Abraham  ;  and  this  view,  in 
whole  or  part,  is  now  a  point  of  faith  with  more  than  a  hundred  millions. 

Let  us  try  to  state  simply  a  series  of  facts,  without  attempting  to  build  on 
them  : — 

I.  Nobility  depending  on  letters-patent  is  a  thing  undreamt  of  by  the  Arabs. 
Titled  travellers  in  Arabia  have  sometimes  thought  that  their  connection  with  the 
peerage  raised  them  in  the  eyes  of  the  Bedouin.  But  any  impression  thus  produced 
can  only  have  depended  on  all  the  words  by  which  the  conventional  English  idea 
of  "  nobility  "  admits  of  presentation  to  an  Arab  being  pre-associated  in  his  mind 
with  different  ideas.  When  the  old-fashioned  Highlander  said  that  King  George 
could  make  any  one  he  liked  a  Duke,  but  that  "nobody  could  make  a  Mackay,"  he 
exactly  expressed  the  Bedouin  view.  This  comes  out  in  the  word  a-sil — havino- 
for  primary  idea  established  on  a  sure  foundation — which  in  Arabia  forms  the 
equivalent  of  our  "old,"  as  applied  to  birth.  What  the  arch  is  in  masonr)^ 
a-sd-iai,  or  a  deeply  laid  foimdation,  is  in  the  Arab's  view  of  breeding.  In  modern 
Europe,  at  all  events  our  portion  of  it,  we  ask.  What  has  been  a  man's  or  a  woman's 
history,  subsequently  to  being  born  ?  and  what  improvements  has  he  undergone 
through  education  ?  In  the  East,  especially  Arabia,  the  point  is,  How  has 
he,  or  she,  been  bred?  That  a  man's  grandfather  should  have  been  rich  or 
poor,  front  rank  or  rear  rank,  is  secondary.  All  that  is  essential  is,  that  his 
genealogy  should  be  traceable  to  established  stock.  Ovine  ignotnm,  &c.,  goes 
but  a  short  way  in  Arabia  proper  :  and  for  one  whose  progenitors  may  have 
been  Turks  or  Levantines  to  put  himself  on  a  level  with  him  whose  pedigree 
every  one  knows  to  be  Arab,  all  Arab,  and  nothing  but  Arab,  would  there  be 
looked  on  as  utter  presumption.  The  Bedouin,  it  should  further  be  observed,  do 
not  think  it  possible  for  blood  that  has  suffered  mixture  to  recover  itself  A 
son  of  Kah-tan  by  an  African  woman,  even  if  a  daughter  of  the  tent  noblesse  be 
given  to  him  to  wife,  cannot,  in  the  opinion  of  his  kindred,  make  so  much  as  a 
beginning  to  restore  to  his  offspring  the  true  Arab  purity  and  impress.  The 
same  romantic  ideal  finds  expression  in  the  desert  law  reserving  for  every  youth 
the  right  of  claiming  the  hand  of  his  father's  brother's  daughter,  at  a  lower  dowry 
than  that  for  which  the  maiden's  parents  would  accept  a  stranger.  In  the  speech 
of  Bedouin,  bintu  a  mm,  or  cousin,  passes  as  the  accepted  euphemism  for  a  man's 
wedded  wife.  It  would  be  useful  to  ascertain  whether  or  not  these  consanguineous 
marriages  1  prove  injurious,  in  respect  of  longevity,  fecundity,  and  soundness.  But 
with  this  problem  still  unsolved  in  Europe,  where  the   necessary  questions  could 

^  Abraham's  wife,  Sarah,  we  know,  was  his  half-sister — Gen.  xx.  12. 


CHAP.  II.  WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS    COME  FROM?  95 

be  put  in  the  census  paper,  the  effects  of  such  unions  on  the  Bedouin  Arabs  are 
not  hkely  soon  to  be  discovered. 

II.  As  a  result,  more  or  less,  of  this  custom  of  close  marriages,  a  consider- 
able  degree  of  "type  fixity,"  displaying  itself  in  inter-resemblance,  runs  in  the  several 
Bedouin  stock-groups,  and  even  circles  of  stock-groups.  In  the  most  "aristocratic" 
assembly  of  Englishmen,  how  diverse  the  shapes  and  features  ;  how  uncertain  the 
presence  even  where  most  to  be  expected  of  outward  or  physical  marks  of  race 
superiority !  And  one  reason  of  this  may  be  the  freedom  with  which  our  ancient 
families,  unscared  by  the  Frenchman's  fear  of  misalliance — for  which,  by  the  way, 
our  lano;uao-e  contains  no  word — mate  with  others  less  artificial.  On  looking  round 
a  tentful  of  Bedouin,  on  the  contrary,  though  different  ethnic  types  may  not  be 
wanting,  one  generally  sees  sufficient  evidence  that  the  tribal  bond,  however  it  may 
have  originated,  has  long  been  one  of  well-kept  mutual  kinship. 

Traces  of  breeding  are  in  the  pose  and  figure  ;  the  head  is  well  made  and  well 
set  on  ;  the  small  hand,  and  foot,  and  ear  are  prevalent ;  the  most  common  cast  of 
nose  is  the  Wellingtonian — neither  a  beak  nor  a  battering-ram,  but  a  prominent  and 
straightforward  feature. 

III.  Whether  as  resulting  from  its  fixity  of  type,  or  from  other  causes,  Arab 
blood  seems  to  possess  a  special  virtue.  If  in  our  own  island  the  pedigrees  of 
those  famed  in  field  and  senate  be  examined,  from  the  Stuarts  and  Plantagenets  to 
the  Roses,  Napiers,  and  Wolseleys,  a  high  percentage  will  be  found  to  be  Norman. 
In  the  historical  and  old  territorial  aristocracy  of  the  three  kingdoms,  names  but 
slightly  if  at  all  altered  from  those  in  Froissart  are  conspicuous.  Nay,  even  north 
of  the  Highland  line  in  Scotland,  half  the  Dunniewassals  who,  in  compliment,  as  they 
think,  to  the  nakedness  of  Celtic  ancestors,  refuse  trousers,  are  descended  from 
Norman  immigrants,  like  Baliol  and  the  "  Bruce  of  Bannockburn."  The  Norman 
blood  of  the  Eastern  world — the  unbridled,  masterful,  enterprising,  conquering,  and  it 
may  be  added  eloquent,  stock — clearly  is  the  Arab.  Not  only  is  this,  when  pure,  a 
well-spring  of  powerful  qualities  ;  but  even  a  little  of  it,  when  infused  into  families 
of  wholly  different  derivation,  has  often  led  to  greatness.  For  example,  among  the 
historical  figures  of  native  India  the  soldier-adventurer  Hyder  A'li,  father  of  Tippoo, 
Sultan  of  Mysore,  was  the  offspring  of  an  Arab  mother.  The  celebrated  Sir  Salar 
Jung,  from  1853  to  his  death  in  1883  Minister  of  Hyderabad — type  of  high  breeding 
and  nobility  alike  of  mind  and  aspect — was  the  thirty-third  in  descent  from  a  family 
of  Medina.  Truly,  there  maybe  more  in  "blood,"  as  it  is  called,  than  we  know 
of;  though  this,  to  be  sure,  applies  to  most  things. 

IV.  Not  only  the  Arab  man,  and  the  Arab  horse,  but  also  very  many  of  the 
creatures  of  the  Arabian  plain,  from  the  largest  antelopes  down  to  the  im.y  yar-hf, 
or  jumping-mouse,  are  remarkable  for  the  grace  and  beauty,  the  absence  of  all  useless 


96 


THE  BREEDERS   OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   11. 


substance,  and  the  signs  of  "blood"  or  "quality,"  which  belong  to  them.  In  this 
respect  the  Arab  greyhound  resembles  the  Arab  horse.  A  more  sprite  -  like 
creature,  or  one  more  completely  made  for  speed,  was  never  moulded  by  man  or 
nature.  So  far  as  these  observations  refer  to  tent-bred  animals,  they  more  or  less 
point  to  the  force  of  pttre  breeding ;  but  the  hawks  and  bustards,  antelopes  and 
wild  asses,  of  the  desert,  must  owe  their  refined  proportions  to  the  soil  and  climate. 
A  country  the  fauna  of  which  is  of  this  description  may  undoubtedly  be  regarded  as 
offering  special  facility  for  the  production  of  high-bred  domestic  animals.  We  never 
have  felt  tempted  to  breed  Arabians  in  England.  But  if,  in  spite  of  the  enormous 
initial  outlay,  and  the  difficulty  of  afterwards  maintaining  the  necessary  establish- 
ment, the  English  thoroughbred  horse  could  be  bred,  and  galloped,  and  fed,  say  on 
the  Ja-bal  Sham-mar  plateau,  and  the  two-year-old  produce  sent  to  Newmarket,  the 
experiment  would  be  interesting. 


In  Arabia,  as  in  other  countries,  an  epoch  of  obscurity,  thick  with  gods  and 
demons,  giants  and  giant-killers,  fabulous  tribes  and  peoples,  lies  behind  the  begin- 
nings of  history.  Many  diffused  legends  of  those  remote  centuries  were  afterwards 
quoted  by  Muhammad,  for  the  purpose  of  producing  the  strongest  possible  moral 
impression  on  his  countrymen.  Hence  the  Kur-an  abounds  in  references  to 
very  ancient  Arabian  kingdoms,  and  to  the  miraculous  interferences  by  which  they 
were  destroyed.  The  action  of  "sacred  books"  in  preserving  material  of  this 
description  has  been  noticed  by  writers  as  divergent  as  Gibbon  and  Dean  Stanley  ;  ^ 
to  a  great  extent,  it  forms  a  necessary  feature  of  their  antiquity.  We  allude  to  it 
only  to  say  that  a  middle  course  will  here  be  aimed  at,  relatively  to  all  that  has 
thus  come  down.  On  the  one  hand,  mere  fossil  remains  will  not  be  treated  as 
necessarily  important  ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  will  be  remembered  that  many  an 
undiscovered  fact  of  history  probably  is  imbedded  in  the  strange  conglomerate 
of  ancient  fable. 


^  We  cite  of  Gibbon's  references,  that  in  his  33d  ch. 
to  "the  memorable  fable  of  the  Seven  Sleepers"  of 
Ephesus  ;  the  currency  of  which  in  the  East  is  testi- 
fied, while  its  diffusion  has  been  enormously  increased, 
through  its  having  been  brought  into  the  Kur-an  (S. 
xviii.) :  and  further,  his  suggestion,  in  his  50th  ch.,  that 
the  tenet  of  the  immaculate  conception  of  the  Virgin 
Mary  was  "  borrowed  from  the  Kur-an."  The  late 
Dean  of  Westminster  {Lect.  on  Hist.  East.  Church,  p. 
253)  mentions,  inter  alia,  the  latter  legend  as  one  of 
those  which  Muhammad  "  derived  from  Christian 
sources  ; "  and  which  were  "  received  back  from  him 
into  Christendom."     The  foot  page  reference  under 


this  statement  is  "  Kur.  iii.  31,  37."  As  two  such 
eminent  writers  have  noticed  this  point,  we  may  just 
say  that,  according  to  the  best  Baghdad  scholars, 
the  Arab  Prophet  taught, — (i)  that  Mary  was,  while 
yet  unbor-n,  dedicated  by  her  mother  to  God's  ser- 
vice ;  (2)  that  her  Lord  accepted  her  ;  (3)  that  at  her 
birth  she  was  miraculously  shielded  from  the  touch 
of  Satan  ;  (4)  that  all  her  life  she  was  endowed  with 
immaculacy.  The  Roman  view,  which,  though  only 
in  our  day  (1854)  made  binding,  has  long  been  fa- 
\'Oured  by  the  Jesuits,  goes  further  than  the  Arabian,  in 
representing  the  act  of  sanctification  as  simultaneous 
with  conceptio7i. 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS   COME  FROM? 


97 


Accordingly,  all  that  need  here  be  said  of  the  very  early  period  of  Arabia  is 
that,  although  several  of  the  peoples  —  e.g.,  the  Amalekites  and  the  nation  of 
Tha-mud — who  then  existed  lasted  well  into  historic  times,  they  are  now  no  more. 
This  fact  is  embodied  in  the  name,^  meaning  the  lost,  or  cut  off,  Arabs,  which 
adheres  to  them. 

Advancing  from  spaces  of  Cimmerian  darkness  to  those  of  dawning  light, 
we  soon  perceive  an  essential  fact.  Not  all  the  mountains  of  futile  explanation 
which  have  been  raised  over  it,  can  obscure  this  circumstance  in  the  conditions  of 
Arabia,  that  from  the  earliest  times  of  which  we  have  cognisance  two  populations  as 
dissimilar  as  the  typical  Ba-da-wt  and  the  typical  Ha-dha-ri  have  divided  its  area 
between  them.  A  passing  glimpse  of  the  Sabsean  period  of  Arab  history  was 
afforded  in  a  previous  chapter.  Strabo  -  has  preserved  the  information  that  be- 
fore our  era  S.  Arabia  contained  not  only  the  people  of  Sa-ba,  but  several  other 
settled  nations.-^  Succeeding  capitals  of  ancient  Yemen — Ma-rib  and  San-a,  and 
others  before  them — teemed  with  aristocratic  figures ;  builders  of  palaces ;  hard- 
fighting  Ceesars ;  satraps  or  governors  of  subsidiary  provinces.  Under  the  same 
regime  towns  and  villages  grew  up.  Commerce,  agriculture,  and  the  industrial 
arts  ^  prospered.  Im-ru  '1  Kais  uses  Ya-md-ni,  or  Yemenite,  as  a  synonym  for 
travelling  merchant.  Traders,  and  leaders  of  successful  or  unsuccessful  military 
expeditions,  told  in  many  lands  their  stories  of 

"  Sabfean  odours  from  the  spicy  shore 
Of  Arabic  the  blest." « 

But  these  influences,  as  has  also  been  seen,  hardly  if  at  all  affected  the  middle 
zone  of  the  peninsula.  Then,  as  now,  Nu-fudh  land  formed  a  sort  of  political 
island ;  within  which  more  or  less  were  exclusiveness,  independence,  and  the 
migratory  habit.  All  these  facts  are  well  established.  Authentic  ancient  sources 
yield  them  ;  and  in  our  time  they  have  been  verified  from  coins  and  inscriptions. 


■'  In  Arabic,  A'rabu  'I  A'ribafi  V  ba-i-da. 

2  Bk.  XV.  4,  2. 

3  The  Minseans,  on  the  Red  Sea  ;  the  Ka-ta-bdn, 
or  Catabanes  ;  and  the  people  of  Hadh-ra-maut, 
whose  city  was  Sabota. 

*  Among  the  industries  of  ancient  Yemen  the 
tanning  and  colouring  of  hides  held  a  great  place. 
To  this  day,  in  the  towns  of  Arabia  and  I'rak,  the 
only  ai'ticle  of  indigenous  design  which  at  all  resembles 
the  European  shoe  is  called  a  ya-ina-nt.  Notwith- 
standing an  increasing  inflow  of  slop-shoes  and  ankle- 
boots  from  India  and  Europe,  this  is  still  the  common 
wear  with  old-fashioned  Arab  folk.  Bedouin  as  often 
go  barefooted  as  otherwise.    The  pattern  of  their  shoe 


varies  ;  but  the  principle  is  the  very  ancient  one  of  a 
sole  attached  to  the  foot  with  straps.  A  common 
kind  is  this  : — 


An 7,  or  Shoe,  of  the  Arabs. 


Paradise  Lost. 


98 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


As  just  now  hinted,  the  difficulty  lies  in  the  interpretations  of  them  which  have 
been  invented.     Whatever  may  have  been  the  case 

"  in  the  golden  prime 
Of  good  Haroun  Alraschid,"  ^ 

modern  Baghdad  affords  but  slig-ht  facilities  for  researches  of  this  nature.  It  is 
long  since  an  Abu  '1  Fi-da,  or  an  El  As-ma'-i,  has  arisen  among  the  Arabs.  So  far  as 
our  acquaintance  extends,  the  men  of  to-day  are  chiefly  grammarians ;  without  the 
power,  even  in  that  limited  field,  of  going  outside  of  Arabic  into  other  Semitic 
tongues.  The  cultivation  of  their  several  "  orthodoxies "  absorbs  them ;  and 
their  inclination  towards  secular  studies  is  even  slighter  than  their  materials.  All 
things  considered,  probably  the  wisest  of  them  are  they  who  tell  us  that  the 
secrets  of  ancient  history  are  known  to  God  only. 

In  numerous  popular  books,  the  so-called  gemiine,  or  Arabian,  Arabs ^  are 
termed,  indifferently,  the  Southern,  also  Yemenite,  Arabs,  from  a  tradition  that  at 
some  infinitely  remote  period  they  entered  the  peninsula  at  its  south-western  angle  ; 
African  Arabs,  according  to  an  equally  nebulous  theory  that  they  came  from 
Africa  ;  and  lastly,  Kah-td-ni  Arabs,  after  a  reputed  ancestor,  Kah-tan,  a  variant 
perhaps  of  Joktan,  son  of  Eber  of  Genesis ;  though  we  do  not  know  how  many 
of  these  ancient  names  represent  persons,  and  how  many  merely  serve  to  hand 
down  traditions.^ 

And  similarly  all  the  nations  which  are  held  to  have  entered  Arabia  later,  and 
in  whom  the  nomadic  habit  is  much  developed,  appear  in  annals,  now  as  the 
Mtis-td-ri-ba,  lit.  would-be  Arabs  —  sc,  foreigners  who  have  taken  on  the  Arab 
speech  and  character ;  now  as  the  N^orthern  Arabs,  under  the  supposition  of  their 
having  landed,  not  like  their  precursors  in  Yemen,  but  higher  up,  towards  the  isthmal 


^  Tennyson,  in  Becolleciioiis  of  the  Arabia?i  Nigii/s. 

■^{Al'XA'rabuH  A'riba. 

3  For  example,  Ebe?-  and  Peleg.  As  long  as  Europe 
neglected  Semitic  learning,  there  were  none  to  doubt 
Eber's  being  the  great-grandson  of  Shem,  through 
Arpacbshad  ;  and  ancestor  of  Abraham's  father  Terah 
through  Peleg,  Serug,  and  Nahur  (Gen.  x.,  xi.),  not- 
withstanding the  (probably  unperceived)  difficulty  of 
two  separate  views  of  him  being  interwoven  in  the 
genealogical  lists  in  Genesis — one,  that  just  stated  ; 
the  other  (Gen.  x.  21,  25-30),  bringing  in  no  inter- 
mediate link  between  Shem  and  him,  while  reckon- 
ing to  the  "sons  of  Eber"  not  alone  the  descendants 
of  Peleg  (Aramaeans,  Israelites,  and  so-called  "  Ish- 
maelite "  Arabs),  but  the  southern  or  Joktanic  Arabs 
also.  When,  however,  the  name  Eber  was  examined 
by  etymologists,  its  connection  with  the  antique  Sem- 


itic root  rb}'= crossing,  was  perceived.  And  after  a 
time  the  suggestion  followed,  that  if  this  i'br  be  read 
in  the  secondary  Arabic  application  of  a  river-bank, 
or  any  locality  thereon  situated,  Pb-ri,  or  Hebrew,  may 
merely  mean  riparian,  i.e.,  dwellijtg,  or  encampi7tg,  o?i 
a  river.  And  so  with  Peleg,  the  name,  as  supposed, 
of  "  Eber's  "  son,  and  Joktan's  brother.  We  owe  to 
Sprenger  the  suggestion  connecting  this  word  with 
Falj  or  Fa-laj,  the  pi.  of  which,  Af-ldj,  is  the  name 
of  a  district  in  central  Arabia  (p.  32  ante,  in  f.n.)  And 
it  is  worth  considering  whether  this  view  may  not  be 
carried  further.  Fa-la-ja  means,  in  Arabic,  dividing, 
especially  the  ground  with  irrigational  channels  ;  and 
Peleg  may  merely  be  a  personification  of  settlers  on 
irrigated  and  cultivated  soils.  There  is  a  hamlet 
called  Fal-lu-ja  within  two  days  of  Baghdad. 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS   COME  FROM? 


99 


extremity  of  the  Red  Sea;  and  perhaps  oftenest  of  all,  as  the  "  Ishmaelite"  Arabs, 
or  "Children  of  Ni-zar,"  after  the  tradition  that  through  a  real  or  fabidous  A'd-nan, 
and  his  supposed  grandson  Ni-zar,  they  are  the  descendants  of  Ishmael  and  Hagar.^ 
We  notice  with  surprise  that  a  writer  of  so  late  a  date  as  1875,-  in  his  haste  to 
uproot  what  he  terms  the  "  Ishmaelitic  mythos,"  would  assign  to  both  divisions 
of  the  Arabs  an  African  origin.  But  this  is  guess-work.  The  few  statements  which 
its  author  conjoins  with  it,  in  so  far  as  they  are  true,  equally  favour  the  opposite, 
and  indeed  certain,  conclusion,  that  large  portions  of  Africa,  notably  Abyssinia,^ 
were  colonised  and  Semitised  from  S.  Arabia.'* 

The  account  just  given  of  how  the  existing  nations  of  Arabia  are  commonly 
classified  is  of  course  but  a  summary.  The  division  rests  only  in  part  on  the  sure 
basis  of  facts  which  still  admit  of  being  tested ;  but  it  is  unnecessary  here  to  notice 
more  than  one  of  its  many  obscurities.  It  was  just  now  said  that  the  nomadic  habit 
more  showed  itself  in  the  Arabs  of  the  later  than  of  the  earlier  immigration.  And 
much  further  back,^  it  will  be  remembered,  we  marked  and  postponed  the  question 
of  whether  a  7-ace  distinction,  or  merely  the  force  of  circumstances,  forms  the  basis 
of  this  divergence  between  the  two  populations.  Here  this  topic  again  invites  us; 
but  instead  of  treating  it  in  the  abstract,  let  us  approach  it  through  the  familiar 


^  Seeing  that  Muhammad  was  of  the  Mus-ta'-ri-ba, 
the  se^■eral  hnks  in  this  pedigree  are  treated  by  many 
as  post-Islamic  inventions  designed  to  lend  new  lustre 
to  the  Prophet's  ancestry.  This  may  be  so  :  that  is, 
the  chain  of  connection  may  be  the  work  of  an  eastern 
Debrett ;  but  the  main  fact  of  the  Mus-ta'-ri-ba  having- 
long  before  Muhammad's  era  claimed  Is-ma-i'l  for 
heroic  ancestor  is  well  established. 

-  The  late  Mr  W.  G.  Palgrave,  in  Eucy.  Brit., 
vol.  ii.  pp.  235-265.  There  never  was  a  more  useful 
repertory  of  knowledge  than  Messrs  Black's  great 
\\ork  in  its  present  form.  But  the  article  on  Arabia 
is  an  exception.  They  who  refer  to  that  article  for 
information  on  Arabian  topics,  will  on  many  points 
be  misled  instead  of  guided. 

^  "With  the  Ethiopians  6"(Z-^a  means  men:  a  clear 
indication  of  their  Sabsean  descent." — Prof.  D.  H. 
Muller,  in  art.  Yemen,  Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  xxiv.  p.  738. 

*  After  crossing  from  Arabia  (Aden)  to  Africa  with 
the  Abyssinian  e.xpedition,  the  many  resemblances 
which  we  noticed  between  the  two  countries  recalled 
the  legend  of  the  Red  Sea  basin  having  been  sud- 
denly made  by  an  earthquake.  Similar  physical  char- 
acteristics, such  as  shape  and  size  of  head,  slight 
development  of  calf,  and  appearance  of  the  hair,  inet 
us  in  the  inhabitants  of  both  coast-lines.  The  Shoho 
tribes  of  the  passes  leading  from  the  seaboard  to 
the   Abyssinian    highlands    seemed    almost    singular 


in  respect  of  the  low  point  of  physical  depression, 
which  was  touched  by  them.  But  on  afterwards 
making  the  acquaintance  of  the  Niclz-ra-tu  'I  Ha-sd, 
as  the  Al  Ha-sa  oasis  is  termed  by  Bedouin,  we 
met  their  very  brothers,  in  the  shape  of  certain  tribes 
of  goat-pasturing  Arabs,  so  desiccated  of  frame  and 
inferior  of  aspect  that  a  group  of  them  squatted  round 
a  well,  or  sleeping  on  their  faces  with  the  fore-arm  for 
a  pillow,  might  at  first  sight  be  mistaken  for  weeds  of 
the  soil.  Zoologically,  the  two  countries  seemed  parts 
of  one  another  ;  and  even  the  name,  Ba-nu  Is-rd-il, 
of  the  first  wild  creature  shot  by  us  at  ZuUa,  the  tiny 
African  antelope,  was  through  and  through  Semitic. 
The  floras  also  were  similar.  Lastly,  several  of  the 
names  for  common  objects  were  the  same  on  both  sides 
of  the  Straits  of  Babu  '1  Man-dab.  One  such  word, 
the  most  indispensable  of  all,  viz.,  mde,  water,  proved 
to  be  equally  that  of  Arab,  Ethiopian,  and  Egyptian. 
But  on  afterwards  reading  all  the  speculations  to 
which  the  extended  range  of  the  words  in  question 
has  contributed,  from  Prof  Noldeke's  "modest  hypo- 
thesis "  that  the  "  primitive  seat  of  the  Semites  is  to  be 
sought  in  Africa,"  to  the  view  that  Egyptian  may  form 
a  relic  of  Semitic  speech  before  the  triliteral  root 
development,  the  difficulties  and  dangers  of  aerial 
navigation  appeared  inconsiderable  compared  with 
those  of  philological. 
'"  V.  p.  1 8,  iwte. 


lOO 


THE  BREEDERS    OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK    II. 


Story  of  Ishmael  and  Hagar  having  in  a  special  s&ns&  fotuided  the  several  nations 
of  the  Mus-ta'-ri-ba,  or,  to  give  them  the  name  by  which  they  often  pass,  the 
"  Ishmaelite  Arabs."  Many  miscellaneous  gleanings  on  this  subject  are  before  us. 
We  do  not  presume  to  regard  them  as  contributions,  but  merely  as  fragments, 
some  of  which  may  yield  suggestions  to  better  equipped  investigators.  But  in  the 
first  place,  certain  general  observations  are  necessary. 

I.  From  very  early  times  the  northern  Arabs  were  mainly  nomads  ;  while 
Yemen,  as  has  been  seen,  was  the  seat  of  settled  life  and  civilisation.  But  when 
some  European  writers  represent  the  contrast  between  the  two  groups  as  essen- 
tially that  between  nomadic  and  settled  manners,  they  go  too  far,  and  are  not 
justified  by  the  Arabian  chronicles.  In  point  of  fact,  masses  of  the  southern  Arabs 
have  the  Bedouin  habit.  Such  are  nearly  all  the  hordes  of  the  Persian  Gulf 
littoral — Al  Mur-ra,  Uj-man,  Ba-nu  Yas,  and  others;  with  notably  Kah-tan  in 
inner  Arabia.  Nor  should  the  statement  be  omitted  that  from  the  epoch  of  ancient 
Tadmur,  and  before  it,  downward,  the  Mus-ta'-ri-ba  have,  on  occasion,  emulated 
the  Yemenite  settlers  in  obtaining  a  grip  of  towns  and  castles. 

II.  The  prevalence  anciently  of  Jewish  settlements  and  kingdoms  within  the 
Arabian  peninsula  is  one  of  those  special  subjects  which  require  special  reading. 
We  do  not  here  allude  to  the  signs  of  this  which  Baghdad  exhibits.  From  the 
ethnic  standpoint,  it  may  be  of  but  slight  significance  that,  in  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates  valleys,  not  only  the  towns,  but  the  most  outlying  places,  contain  Jewish 
traces  :  that  on  the  upper  Tigris,  a  tomb  on  the  site  of  Nineveh  is  venerated  alike 
by  Jew,  Christian,  and  Muslim  as  that  of  Jonah  ;^  that  lower  down  the  same  river, 
near  Baghdad,  the  last  resting-place,  real  or  supposed,  of  Joshua^  attracts  the 
pilgrim ;  that  lower  still,  not  far  from  Bussorah,  the  dust  of  Ezra  ^  occupies  a  con- 
spicuous shrine.  These  and  other  kindred  legends  naturally  connect  themselves  with 
the  several  deportations  of  the  Jews  from  their  native  land  by  the  Assyrian  or 
Babylonian  kings.  Hilla,  three  days  S.W.  of  Baghdad,  on  the  site  of  Babylon,  still 
contains  a  Jewish  remnant.  Modern  Baghdad  is  understood  to  owe  to  Hilla  the 
several  thousand  Israelites  who  are  now  engaged  in  adding  farthing  to  farthing  on 


1  With  Arabs  respectively  Yu-nus,  Yu-sha',  U'zair, 
three  of  Is-lam's  several  hundred  prophets  ;  of  whom 
these  six — Nuh  (Noah),  Ib-ra-him  (Abraham),  Mii-sa 
(Moses),  I'sa  (Jesus),  and  Muhammad  —  are  dignified 
and  distinguished  above  all  others.  As  we  write,  the 
Baghdad  Jews  are  at  war  with  the  town  authorities, 
on  the  point  of  interment  in  Joshua's  precincts. 
When  cholera  lately  appeared,  orders  were  issued 
which  prevented  them  from  carrying  their  dead  there 
in    any   circumstances.      Nevertheless,    on    a   Rabbi 


dying,  they  took  the  body  by  night  to  the  holy 
ground  ;  and,  resisting  the  police,  interred  it.  Heads 
were  broken  at  the  time  ;  and  many  of  the  Jews  Avere 
afterwards  arrested.  But  the  ancient  money-lending 
people,  if  a  "  feeble  folk "  in  Prak,  are  stronger  in 
other  quarters.  So  well  has  the  telegraph  been 
worked  by  them,  that  the  Sublime  Porte  has  now 
removed  the  "persecuting"  Wi-li ;  whose  successor 
has,  however,  caused  the  Rabbi's  body  to  be  taken  up 
and  re-buried  in  another  place. 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS   COME  FROM? 


lOI 


the  Tigris,  in  hopes  of  their  children  one  day  "sitting  at  meat"  with  European 
princes.  But  when  Ave  import  into  this  view  the  larger  facts  that  Jews  at  a 
very  primitive  period  not  only  possessed  districts  of  peninsular  Arabia  like 
Khaibar,  but  in  towns  like  Mecca  and  Yath-rib  (Medina)  lived  side  by  side  with 
pagan  Arabs,  the  close  connection  which  existed  when  the  world  was  younger 
between  Arabia  and  Israel  is  well  illustrated. 

III.  Another  topic  seldom  coming  before  the  general  reader  is,  the  strength 
and  number  of  the  attachments,  to  use  an  anatomical  term,  which  connect  Islamism 
with  Judaism.  How  the  Prophet  of  Al  Islam  placed  his  system  in  the  line  of 
ideal  Judaism,  by  carrying  it  back  to  Abraham,  may  elsewhere  be  read.  At  first  the 
Jews,  on  learning  that  his  theme  was  "the  God  of  Abraham,"  hoped  that  it  might 
be  his  mission  to  convert  Arabia  to  Judaism.  They  soon  discovered  that  his 
object  was  to  bring  out  from  the  ancient  Abrahamic  stem  doctrines  which  were  new 
to  them.  Then,  instead  of  listening  to  him,  they  hated  him,  and  tried  to  kill  him. 
At  last,  when  he  had  gained  the  ear  of  Arabia,  its  Jews,  to  borrow  a  Kuranic 
expression,  entered  in  mtUtitudes  the  religion  of  Allah.  The  connection  of  these 
remarks  is  with  the  prominence  which  we  are  soon  to  see  assigned  to  Abraham  in 
Arabian  legend.  Wherever  Islamism  and  the  Arab  speech  have  extended,  the 
distinctive  titles  of  Kha-li-lu  'Hah,  i.e..  Friend  of  God,  often  shortened  into  The 
Friend,  and  Ab{t  'I  Is-ldm,  or  Father  of  Is-ldni,  belong  to  him.  His  name,  in  its 
Arabicised  form  of  Ib-rd-him,  stands  out  in  the  Kur-an  :  in  one  text  (S.  iii.)  it  is 
said  that  he  was  not  a   Jew,  and  not  a  Christian,  but  a  Ha-mf^  and  Muslim?' 

IV.  The  statements  last  made  introduce  another;  and  that  relates  to  the  recur- 
rence, if  not  invariably  in  the  Kur-an,  at  least  as  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  Arabian 
story,  of  much  of  the  material  which  is  stratified  in  Bible  narratives.  The  Ishmael 
and  Hagar  episode  will  presently  be  adverted  to,  both  in  its  Hebrew  and  Arabian 
forms.  But  first,  this  essential  question  may  be  anticipated,  Are  we  justified  in  think- 
ing such  mixed,  or  common,  Hebraeo- Arabic  elements  in  any  true  sense  proper  to  old 
Arabia  ?  Or  did  not  the  Arabs  first  hear  of  them  through  Islamism  }  We  know 
of  no  modern  European  authorities  who  are  of  opinion  that  Muhammad  received  the 
prophetic  impulse  from  other  than  Arabian  sources.  But  when  it  comes  to  deter- 
mining where  he  got  the  histories  which  appear  in  the  Kur-an,  it  is  different.  Most 
of  these  recitals  deal  with  ScrijDture  characters,  from  Adam  downward  ;  about  whom 


'   V.  Index  I.,  art.  Ha-nif. 

^  V.  Index  I.,  art.  Is-LAM.  Not  JMahometan,  or 
JMuhammadan,  but  Muslim  (Arab  pi.  Mus-li-inte-na, 
Persian  pi.  Mus-Um-ati)  is  the  appellative  applicable 
to  followers  of  El  Is-lam.  Considering  how  wide  the 
field  is  of  England's  naval,  diplomatic,  and  consular 
services,  this  point  may  at  least  be  thought  worthy  of 


a  footnote.  Even  the  mode  of  transcription  suggests 
a  protest.  Words  formed  in  the  mould  of  Semite 
language  require,  when  Aryans  borrow  them,  careful 
handling.  Why  should  Muslim,  at  once  proper  noun, 
common  noun,  and  adjective,  be  altered  into  Mu-sal- 
iiidn,  Mussul-man,  and,  proh  pudor  J  Mussulineii  9 


102 


THE  BREEDERS    OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  II. 


they  tell  the  same  stories,  with  considerable  deviations  and  alterations,  as  those  in 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  But  others  relate  to  ancient  Arabian  prophets  of 
whom  we  do  not  elsewhere  read.  In  respect  of  narratives  of  the  former  category, 
the  supposition  is  reasonable,  that  Muhammad  often  heard  them  repeated  ^  by  per- 
sons not  unacquainted  with  the  "holy  library"  of  Jews  and  Christians,  including 
the  gospels  now  regarded  as  "  apocryphal."  But  this  view  does  not  reveal  the 
sources  of  those  other  Kuranic  narratives  which,  so  far  as  is  known,  never  were 
recorded  before  Muhammad's  time.  Of  course  the  explanation  comes  ready  to 
hand,  and  is  not  unsanctioned  by  European  scholars,  that  the  Arab  Prophet  fabri- 
cated all  such  "  biographies,"  -  just  as  our  own  preachers  "bring  in  for  the  sake  of 
illustration  "  material  which  could  hardly  be  verified.  It  is  useless  to  appeal  on  these 
topics  to  learned  Arabs,  whose  stand  is  on  the  "  impregnable  rock "  of  Gabriel. 
As  for  our  own  impressions,  they  chiefly  depend  on  some  acquaintance  with  ori- 
ental life,  and  with  the  methods  of  unlettered  workers.  Men  naturally  are  speakers 
and  hearers,  not  writers  and  readers.  Gibbon  said  with  equal  truth  and  beautj-, 
"  The  school  of  the  Arabs  was  a  clear  firmament  and  a  naked  plain."  Viewed  as  a 
Book,  Al  Kur-an  is  unique  :  it  is  the  substance  of  Al  Is-lam  ;  and  the  Arab  empire 
grew  out  of  it,  like  the  oak  out  of  its  acorn.  But  we  must  remember  that  it  did  not 
originate  in  any  idea  of  book-making.  After  forty  years  or  so  of  human  contacts, 
the  Prophet  spoke  out  of  his  mind's  rich  stores,  till  he  died  at  sixty-two,  without 
even  having  caused  an  authentic  collection  of  his  sermonisings  to  be  made.  In 
the  present  stage  of  historical  science,  the  necessary  reagents  are  wanting  for  the 
separation  of  the  real  from  the  mythical  in  his  stories  of  antiquity.  But  that  does 
not  prevent  us  from  expressing,  with  great  deference,  the  opinion,  that  the  narratives 
in  the  Kur-an,  however  freely  handled,  are,  more  or  less,  "  broad-based "  on  the 
traditions  of  ages  lost  to  chronology,  the  diffusion  of  which  in  large  classes  of  the 
Arabs  before  Muhammad  is  too  probable  to  be  reasonably  doubted. 

The  preceding  observations,  it  will  be  remembered,  immediately  followed 
the  statement  that  the  tradition  of  Ishmael  being  the  eponymous  father  of  the 
uncentralised  Arabian  nations  was  next  to  occupy  us.  That  did  not  mean  that 
we  intended  to  restrict  ourselves  to  the  notices  in  Genesis  of  Ishmael  and  Hagar. 
The  "gleanings"  which  we,  at  the  same  time,  intimated  the  purpose  of  presenting. 


1  See  the  question  of  whether  Muhammad  could 
read  and  write  shghtly  noticed  in  Index  I.,  art. 
Kur-an. 

2  In  proof  of  the  Kur-an's  narratives  being  pecuHar 
to  it,  and  not  rooted  in  old  Arabian  legend,  we  are 
sometimes  reminded  that  the  literature  of  the  "  Days 
of  Ignorance  "  contains  no  trace  of  them.  But  nothing 
that  could  be  styled  a  book  existed  in  the  Arabic  lan- 


guage before  Muhammad.  Only  the  unwritten  effu- 
sions of  the  minstrels  were  then  in  circulation  ;  and 
the  world  of  the  pagan  Arabs  lay  at  an  infinite  remove 
from  religious  subjects.  Even  the  god-name  Allah, 
by  which  their  oaths  were  sworn,  occurs  but  once  or 
twice  in  the  seven  ballads  called  Al  Mu-'al-la-KAt, 
q.  V.  in  Index  I. 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS   COME  FROM? 


103 


are  from  many  quarters.  Admittedly  none  of  them  are  historical,  if  that  term  be 
strictly  applied.  There  is  nothing  easier  than  to  embellish  history,  unless  it  be  to 
fabricate  it ;  but  if  Sisyphus  had  been  set  for  a  change  to  use  unhistoric  tales  as  if 
they  were  historic,  he  would  soon  have  asked  for  his  stone  again.  What  here 
suggests  this  remark  is  the  subject  immediately  before  us  of  Arab  and  Hebrew 
origins.  The  ground  as  to  this  grows  very  difficult  as  soon  as  we  pass  beyond  the 
genuine  tradition,  attested  in  Scripture,  that  there  was  kinship  between  the  two 
peoples.  But  writing  as  we  do  in  the  lands  of  Semites,  where  the  common  belief  is 
that  Abraham  was  an  Arab,  and  through  Is-ma-i'l  the  father  of  the  more  typically  and 
generally  Bedouin  nations,  it  would  not  be  right  altogether  to  shun  this  question. 
The  following  references  to  it  fall  under  the  four  divisions,  of  Physical  Aspect ; 
Speech,  especially  Proper  names ;  Characteristics ;  and  Traditions.  Several  of  the 
indications  which  present  themselves  are  chiefly  negative  or  neutral ;  while  all  do  not 
point  quite  in  the  same  direction  :  for  they  have  not  been  chosen  or  sifted  in  the 
interests  of  a  set  conclusion.  But  we  consider  this  view  to  run  like  a  thin  thread 
through  them,  that  the  Semite  group,  which,  under  a  succession  of  great  leaders, 
developed  into  Israel,  came  originally  from  that  foundry  of  nations,  Arabia. 

Physical  Aspect. 

It  is  not  to  be  disputed  that  the  cast  of  countenance  commonly  considered 
typical  of  the  Hebrew  stock  often  appears  in  Arabs.  And  we  have  some 
idea  that  this  facial  outline  more  prevails  in  the  Ishmaelite  than  in  the  Yemenite 
nations  ;  though  this  impression  perhaps  depends  merely  on  our  having  seen  more 
of  the  former  than  of  the  latter.  Thus  the  so-called  Jewish  visage  often  develops 
a  high  degree  of  feminine,  yet  not  effeminate,  beauty  in  the  youths  of  the  Ae-ni-za 
and  the  Sham-mar.  Later  in  life,  when  sun  and  drought  and  grime,  blended  vacuity 
and  vigilance,  and  the  habit  of  dwelling  ''  in  the  midst  of  alarms,"  have  too  soon 
brought  on  old  age,  the  same  features  often  turn  large  and  statuesque ;  and  the  chest 
and  bust  expand.  In  Bedouin  adhering  to  the  Bedouin  life,  obesity  is  so  rare,  as 
rather  to  be  taken  as  showing  that  the  "  cows  have  been  in  the  corn  "  in  the  matter 
of  immediate  ancestry.^     Nevertheless  the  tents  of  Sha-mi-ya  and  Al  Ja-zi-ra  con- 


^  Town  life  and  Falstaffian  habits  (bating  always 
the  "  old  sack ")  —  all  one's  time  divided  between 
mosque  and  harem,  and  "  sleeping  upon  benches 
after  noon'' — may  give  us  Falstaffs  even  in  Najd. 
For  a  Bad-u  who  has  taken  to  kingcraft,  and  who 
is  nothing  if  not  a  Hotspur,  the  keeping  of  his  figure 
is  essential.     A-mir  Fai-sal  {v.  p.  36,  ante)  turned  in 


the  end  corpulent ;  but  that  was  after  age  and  its  in- 
firmities, including  blindness,  had  "  tamed  his  force." 
His  son  and  successor,  A'bdu  ''lla,  was  naturally  obese 
and  bovine  ;  in  which,  and  in  the  contempt  engen- 
dered by  it,  causes  of  the  Ibn  Su-ii'ds'  downfall  are 
recognisable. 


I04 


THE  BREEDERS    OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


tain  many  a  powerful  and  formidable  figure ;  the  lineaments,  when  inclining  to  the 
"  Jewish,"  suggesting  the  old  heroic,  not  the  modern,  stamp.  We  shall  not  soon 
forget  the  impression  received,  the  first  time  of  alighting  at  the  tents  of  one  of  the 
bluest-blooded  of  all  the  septs  of  the  Ae-ni-za.  Instead  of  scraggy  figures,  in  gar- 
ments like  night-shirts,  holding  on  to  barebacked  mares,  stalwart  warriors  in  casques 
and  tunics  of  chain-armour  ^  came  caracoling  out.  At  supper-time,  the  Shekh's  ina- 
dlnf,  or  great  guest-tent,  attracted  hundreds  ;  and  many  a  head  was  there  which 
a  painter  engaged  on  some  passage  of  Bible  history  would  eagerly  have  copied. 
In  the  drowsy  firelight,  we  almost  felt  as  if  we  had  been  asleep,  like  Steenie  in 
"Wandering  Willie's  Tale"  in  Redgauntlet,  and  on  awaking  found  ourselves  with  a 
company  fresh  from  witnessing  the  drowning  of  Pharaoh's  army.  For  a  moment, 
this  fancy  conjured  up  many  a  preconceived  idea ;  but  the  fallacy  of  confounding 
resemblances,  real  or  imaginary,  with  origination,  was  soon  apparent.  A  type  of 
countenance  approximating  to  the  "  Jewish"  is  even  commoner  in  the  Afghans  than 
in  any  division  of  the  Arabs. ^ 


Speech. 

The  view  of  "  nations "  and  "  languao'es "  beino-  convertible  terms  carries  us 
back  to  the  description  which  connects  the  scattering  of  the  human  family  with  the 
confounding  of  the  Noachian  language.^  Perhaps  the  tendency  too  much  to  accept 
differences  of  speech  as  proofs  of  diversity  of  race  may  be  regarded  as  a  survival  of 
this  conception  ;  but  at  all  events  let  us  not  overlook  the  potentiality  of  a  common 
language,  however  formed,  to  weld  into  one,  as  the  English  tongue  has  done  in  the 
United  States,  mixed  waves  of  population.  Speaking  of  the  case  before  us  :  on  the 
one  hand,  no  one  can  presume  to  say  when  the  Southern,  or  Arabic,  the  Northern, 
or  Aramaic,  and  the  Middle,  or  Hebraic,  languages  severally  assumed  their  present 
forms  ;  on  the  other,  the  date  of  Abraham's  leading  his  father's  horde  from  Haran 


^  A  modern  book  on  the  armour  and  weapons  of 
Arabia  is  wanted.  The  Bedouin  dir-a',  or  coat  of 
proof,  though  sometimes  of  camel's  hide,  is  generally 
of  steel  chain,  topped  with  a  hood  or  helmet,  from  its 
shape  easily  mistaken  by  others  than  Don  Quixotes 
for  a  cup  or  basin — by  the  name  for  which,  indeed 
{tds),  they  call  it.  Modern  articles  of  this  description 
are  chiefly  the  work  of  Persian  and  I'raki  armourers  ; 
but  among  desert  heirlooms  are  blades  and  shirts  of 
proof  belonging  to  ancient  periods.  To  such  refer 
the  following  lines  in  a  pre-Islamic  ballad  : — 

Know  ye  not,  between  us  and  you 

The  squadrons  charge  and  hurl  javelins  ! 


Ours  the  casques  and  shields  of  Yemen, 
And  the  blades  that  curve  and  straighten  ! 
Ours  full  coats  of  shining  armour  ; 
iVIark  how  above  the  sword-belts  they  wrinkle  ! 
When  by  chance  the  warriors  doff  them, 
You  may  see  their  skins  black  from  them  ; 
Their  folds  are  like  the  surface  of  a  lake 
Ruffled  by  the  passing  breezes. 

—  A'MR. 

2  Afghani  chroniclers  apply  the  name  Ba-m'i  Is-rd-U, 
or  Childreji  of  Isj-ael,  to  their  people  ;  but  evidence  is 
wanting  that  they  did  so  before  Islamism. 

3  Gen.  xi.  1-9. 


CHAP.  II.  WHERE   DID    THE  ARABS    COME  FROM? 


los 


into  Palestine  is  undetermined,  though  conjectural!)'  referred  to  B.C.  2000.  One 
strongly  supported  view  is,  that  the  tribes  of  Abraham  and  Lot,  when  they  settled 
in  Canaan,  spoke  Aramaic,  in  which  portions  of  the  Bible  are  written  ;  and  gradually 
exchanged  it  for  the  kindred  language  of  the  Canaanites.  The  reference  in  Isa. 
xix.  18  is  understood  by  competent  scholars  to  indicate  that  the  Hebrew  tongue 
was  "the  language  of  Canaan"  before  it  became  that  of  Israel.  In  all  probability 
our  posterity  will   be  better  informed  on  these  points  than  we  are.^ 

It  is  a  long  step  from  the  "  children  of  Israel  "  to  the  British  Association.  We 
make  it  for  the  sake  of  saying  that  if  the  two  thousand  members  and  upwards  of 
that  body  who  annually  take  their  holiday  in  lecturing,  or  hearing  lectures,  in  the 
cities  of  the  United  Kingdom,  would  one  day  send  a  small  section  to  Arabia — not 
to  an  English  hotel  in  Damascus,  but  to  the  tents  of  Najd- — to  write  down  from 
men's  and  women's  lips  the  words  current  among  nomads,  a  very  great  desideratum 
would  be  supplied.  Here  we  can  only  mention  that  although  the  Bedouin  have 
the  classical  Arabic,  they  also  use  very  many  words  which,  if  traceable  to  Arabic 
at  all,  neither  appear  in  Arabic  dictionaries  nor  are  claimed  by  Baghdad  grammarians 
as  Arabic.  This  is  too  general  a  subject  to  be  here  pursued.  Leaving  on  one  side 
common  words,  let  us  inquire  what,  if  any,  hints  on  the  origin  of  the  Arabs  are  to 
be  met  with  in  their  proper  names.  Place-names  afford  but  few  suggestions.  Vast 
expanses,  both  in  the  peninsula  and  in  the  adjoining  lands  of  Arabs,  bear  no  other 
designation  than  Ha-mad,  or  desert.  What  the  word  ocean  is  to  sailors,  ha-indd  is  to 
Arab  nomads  :  vague,  boundless,  undefined  ;  yet  all-sufficing,  all-expressing ;  home- 
name  at  once  of  the  individual  and  his  race.  Within  the  Ha-mad,  wells  (ab-ydr)  and 
springs  {tiydit)  form  the  traveller's  landmarks ;  and  these  may  be  called  after  men, 
or  tribes,  or  wild  animals.  But  we  know  of  no  Arabian  district  which  is  named, 
like  so  many  in  the  New  World,   after  native  lands  under  other  skies. 

Two  of  the  great  meeting-places  of  the  Bedouin  in  Sha-mi-ya,  though  each 
larger  than  many  an  English  parish,  own  no  other  name  than,  the  one,  Al  I-kJiai- 
dhar,  or  The  Green  ;  the  other,  A I  Mar-ta\  The  Pasture.      Names  of  persons  are 


^  Par  example.  Since  the  abo\"e  passage  was  writ- 
ten, a  happy  find  of  upwards  of  300  Cuneiform  Tablets 
at  Tell  el  Amarna,  in  Upper  Egypt,  has  supplied 
philologists  with  new  material.  Among  these  "  brick 
epistles"  (prob.  date  B.C.  1 500-1450)  are  letters  from 
governors  of  towns  in  Palestine  to  Egyptian  person- 
ages, written  in  a  dialect  which  is  held  to  exhibit  in 
certain  important  particulars  "a  close  affinity  to  the 
language  of  the  Old  Testament."  See  the  edition  of 
the  Tablets,  containing  a  bibliography,  which  has 
been  published  by  the  Trustees  of  the  British  Museum. 


Lane,  in  the  Preface  of  his  great  dictionary,  thus  ob- 
serves :  "  It  is  evident  that  all  the  Semitic  languages 
diverged  from  one  form  of  speech  ;  and  the  known 
history  of  the  Arabic  is  sufficient,  I  think,  to  show 
that  the  mixture  of  the  se\'eral  branches  of  the 
Shemites,  in  different  degrees,  with  different  foreign 
races,  was  the  main  cause,  if  not  of  the  di\-ergence, 
at  least  of  the  decay,  of  their  languages,  as  exempli- 
fied by  the  Biblical  Hebrew  and  Chaldee,  and  the 
Christian  Syriac." 


io6 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


more  significant.  We  had  not  long  sat  down  beside  the  Tigris,  when  it  appeared 
that  Bible  names,  such  as  Mu-sa  (Moses) ;  Yu-suf  (Joseph)  ;  Ai-yub  (Job)  ;  D^-ud 
(David)  ;  Sal-man  or  Su-lai-man  (Solomon) ;  I'-sa,^  were  commoner  in  the  Yemenite 
than  in  the  Ishmaelite  Arabs ;  whereas  had  the  latter  in  any  special  sense  been  from 
Abraham,  it  ought  to  have  been  otherwise.  But  the  explanation  was  of  the 
simplest.  For  we  have  seen  how,  in  the  first' flush  of  Islamism,  the  Jews  of  Al 
Hi-jaz  embraced  it :  not  the  inferior  classes  only — the  Jew  vintners,  for  instance,  in 
whose  hands  was  the  wine  trade,  and  who,  when  the  new  faith  plucked  down  their 
flags,^  thought  it  best  to  turn  Muslim — but  the  men  of  culture  too,  the  "  Scribes  and 
Pharisees  "  of  Mecca  and  Medina.^  Many  of  these  would,  sooner  or  later,  drop  their 
Jewish  names.  A  Baghdad  Jew  informs  us  that  when,  some  centuries  ago,  a  mem- 
ber of  his  stock  embraced  Islamism,  the  family  name  of  Obadiah  bin  Shalom  became 
changed  into  the  Islamite  one  of  A'bdu  '11a  bin  Su-Iai-man.  But  very  many  other 
converts  have  kept  the  old  names,  especially  names  living  again  in  the  Kur-an. 
Not  only  the  fact  that  names  of  the  Hebraeo- Arabic  category  have  prevailed  since 
Islamism  among  the  Arabs  is  thus  accounted  for ;  but  equally  the  circumstance  that 
the  frequency  of  such  names  diminishes  in  the  several  nomadic  Arab  nations  in  the 
ratio  of  separation,  or  remoteness,  from  the  Islamic  centres.  By  way  of  testing 
this,  we  obtained  from  the  desert  of  Shi-mi-ya  a  list  containing  forty-four  tribe  names, 
and  thirty-eight  personal  names,  of  the  Ae-ni-za.  The  roll  is  now  before  us  ;  and,  as 
it  chances,  there  is  not  one  name  of  the  Is-ma-i'l  and  Ya'-kub  ^  species  in  it.  Also, 
as  it  chances — for  in  both  cases  it  might  as  easily  have  been  otherwise — it  does  not 
contain  a  single  name  of  that  brand-new  series  which  Muslim  have  manufactured 
by  the  prefixing  of  A'bd  {worshipper)  to  one  of  the  "  ninety-nine  goodly  names," 


1  I'-SA  'l  Ma-sih  {Jesus  ike  Messiah)  having  been 
made  by  Muhammad  one  of  the  six  prophetic  pillars 
of  his  theological  structure,  the  name  I'-sa  has  spread 
in  Arab  families.  The  Arabs  have  certainly  confused 
between  Jesus  and  Esau,  and  given  the  name  of  the 
latter  to  the  former ;  but  the  two  names  have  nothing 
to  do  with  one  another.  In  the  Kur-an,  t'-sa  simply 
is  a  transcription  of  Jesus. 

-  We  know  from  the  ballads  of  the  "  Days  of  Igno- 
rance "  that  wine-sellers'  booths  had  flags  for  signs  in 
ancient  Arabia.  A'n-tar,  depicting  a  finished  gallant, 
describes  him  as  great  at  making  the  vintners  strike 
their  flags  (in  token  of  his  having  bought  up  their 
store).  La-bid  in  his  best-known  poem  thus  addresses 
the  fair  Na-wa-i'a  : — 

Perhaps  thou  knowest  not  how  many  a  bright  and  pleasant 
night  of  fun  and  fellowship 

I  have  spent  in  moonlight  entertainments.  And  to  how  many 
a  vintner's  flag  I  have  been  constant,  as  long  as  it  was  fly- 
ing, with  the  grape-juice  at  a  premium  ; 


Buying  up  the  wine,  every  black  old  skin  of  it,  or  jar  smeared 

with  pitch  out  of  which  they  have  ladled  after  breaking  the 

seal  on  its  mouth. 
And  how  many  a  pure  morning  draught  I  have  drunk  off,  when 

the  glee-maiden  was  drawing  her  guitar  (Arabic,  mu-wat- 

tar)  to  her,  and  her  thumb  adjusting  it. 

5  One  of  these  Jewish  converts,  by  name  A'bdu  'llah 
ibn  Sa-ba,  closely  attached  himself  to  A'li  in  the  stormy 
period  of  the  first  four  Caliphs.  He  instituted  the 
practice  of  giving  allegorical  meanings,  or  any  other 
meanings  which  one  pleases,  to  the  "  plain  Kur-an." 
In  spite  of  A'li's  anger  and  reprobation,  he  sought  to 
teach  that  A'li  was  an  incarnation  of  the  Godhead. 
Thus,  through  a  Jew  of  San-a',  or  rather  perhaps  of 
Egypt,  Islamism  received  in  Arabia,  soon  after  the 
Prophet's  death,  a  tincture  of  all  the  foreign  elements 
of  which  it  afterwards  became  the  receptacle  in  Persia. 
V.  Index  I.,  art.  SuN-Ni  and  ShJ-I'. 

^  Ishmael  and  Jacob. 


CHAP.    II. 


WHERE   DID    THE  ARABS   COME  FROM? 


107 


or  attributes,    supplied    to    Allah    by  the  magnificent   Semitic   imagination  of  the 
Prophet.^ 

Not  only  are  all  the  names  in  the  list  purely  secular  or  "  heathen,"  but  all  of 
them  are  regularly  connected  with  some  Arabic  root ;  the  idea  wrapped  up  in  which 
is  now  an  abstract  one,  now  a  concrete.  Often  the  name  denotes  prosperity, 
or  a  "  flow  "  of  pastoral  wealth.  One  great  Shekh  of  the  Sba',  Muhammadu  -  'I 
Mis-rib,  is  content  to  borrow  the  name  of  the  humble  utensil  {inis-rib)  in  which  milk 
is  set  out  to  turn  sour !  Names  denoting  some  bodily  mark  or  peculiarity,  or  some 
trait  of  character,  are  common.'^  Equally  so  are  those  taken  from  plants  or  animals  ; 
sometimes  from  birds  or  beasts  of  prey  ;  sometimes  from  creatures  as  lowly  as  the 
mouse  or  hedgehog.  The  important  subject  of  the  animal  god,  or  totem — a  loan 
word  from  the  vocabulary  of  the  Ojibway  Indians  —  here  crops  up;  but  notwith- 
standing much  patient  inquiry,  we  can  offer  no  new  observations  tending  to  support 
the  view  which  is  held  by  a  good  many  European  literati,  that  Arab  stocks  whose 
names  are  those  of  plants  or  animals  anciently  believed  themselves  to  be  the  chil- 
dren of  them.  The  next  time  that  the  Royal  Welsh  Fusiliers  garrisons  Hong- 
Kong,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  a  Chinese  archaeologist  from  conjecturing  that 
the  white  goat  marching  at  the  head  of  it  is  its  totem.  The  same  savant,  with- 
out going  back  to  prehistoric  ages,  or  citing  American  savages,  may  also 
find  abundant  material  with  which  to  build  up  his  theorj' — from  the  British  lion 
and  American  eagle  down  to  the  Scandinavian  raven.  And  yet  all  of  us  know 
how  far  removed  from  sober  fact  his  speculations  would  be.  If  any  one  were  to 
suggest  to  Shekh  Fahd,  the  present  head  of  the  Ibn  Hadh-dhal  division  of  the 
Ae-ni-za,  that  the  life  of  himself  and  his  tribe  mysteriously  depended  on  the  Lynx 
[fahd)  species,  he  would  be  as  indignant  as  the   Plantagenets  would  be  if  consid- 


1  E.g.,  A'bdu  'r  Rah-man,  A'bdu  'r  Ra-him,  A'bdu  '1 
Ka-dir.  In  India  all  these  names  are  fast  coming 
under  truncation.  Thousands  of  A'bdu  '1  Kadirs, 
especially  those  of  the  race-course  and  polo-ground, 
content  themselves  with  the  Ka-dir,  as  it  were  our  Mr 
Strong.  A'bdu  '1  Ka-rim  {servant  of  the  Bounteous) 
tends  to  become  in  Bombay  or  Calcutta  Mr  Cream ! 

^  The  casual  reader  may  think  the  name  i\Iu- 
hammad  not  a  "secular"  one;  but  it  was  known, 
although  it  was  not  common,  among  the  ancient 
pagan  Arabs. 

^  The  quaUties  personified  in  Bedouin  names  are 
chiefly  the  irascible  and  strong -handed  ;  but  others 
appear  —  as  Ibnu  V  wa-tad,  son  of  the  tent-peg,  own 
brother  of  our  "  son  of  a  gun."  Names  borrowed  from 
the  tent  replace  ^^■ith  them  the  Halls,  Rooms,  Wyn- 
dowes,  Kitchens,  of  house-building  people.  White 
and  Black,  Short  and  Long,  Hand,  Head,  and  Legge 


are  good  desert  names.  The  noble  family  of  Smythes, 
the  Carpenters,  Tailleurs,  Cookes,  and  Barbours  are, 
of  course,  absent  —  every  handicraft  ranking  below 
beggaiy  in  the  eyes  of  the  nomads.  The  Semitic 
Ibn,  Bin,  or  Be7i,  ser\-ing  alike  for  Mac  and  O'  of 
Celtic,  and  s  and  son  {Jones,  fohnsoii)  of  Welsh  and 
English,  is  never  wanting.  Next  to  the  obligation 
of  transmitting  the  paternal  name,  that  of  publicly 
displaying  it  is  felt  by  Arabs.  Negro  {Si-dT)  or 
Abyssinian  {Ha-ba-sliT)  slaves  reared  among  them, 
and  called  by  some  such  name  as  Mu-sa,  when,  as 
often  happens,  they  grow  wealthy,  seeing  that  in 
Arabia  they  cannot  make  a  pedigree,  at  least  invent 
a  patronymic.  With  no  true  gentile  name  available, 
poetical  substitutes  are  fabricated  —  e.g.,  Mti-sd  ibn 
jA-d'n,  Moses,  son  of  a  hungry  one — name  of  evil  im- 
port for  one's  commissariat,  by  which  a  guide  once 
engaged  bv  us  at  Ku-wait  called  himself 


io8 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


ered  under  the  protection  of  the  broom  ;  or  the  Clan  Chattan,  if  lield  spiritually 
inter-related  with  the  cat.  These  analogies  may  be  considered  faulty,  on  the 
ground  that  cognisances  and  heraldry  are  unknown  to  Bedouin.  This  may  partly 
be  so.  A  white-and-green  banner  is  carried  by  the  Wah-ha-bis ;  and  a  pur- 
ple one  with  a  green  border  by  A-mir  Muhammad's  musters.^  But  the  uncen- 
tralised  Bedouin  charge  in  whirlwinds ;  with  no  marks  to  distinguish  brave  from 
brave,  or  friend  from  foe.  We  know  a  man  whose  face  is  so  small  and  hairy, 
and  his  neck  and  occiput  so  remarkable,  that  his  friends  may  meet  him 
without  being  the  wiser  for  it ;  while  half  a  street  off  one  in  rear  of  him 
cannot  mistake  him !  But  this  is  impossible  with  Arabs.  Their  long  cloaks, 
or  otherwise  long  chemises,^  make  every  one  of  them  like  the  other  ;  and  the 
backs  of  their  heads  and  necks  are  veiled  by  the  shawl-like  kerchief  or  kaf-fi-ya. 
In  a  iniUe,  it  is  only  by  their  cries  that  they  are  distinguishable.^  Therefore  if 
the  Bad-u  who  has  for  his  name  one  of  the  Rose  or  Lilly,  Fox  or  Bullock,  cate- 
gory had  marked  himself  accordingly,  it  would  have  been  but  reasonable  ;  and 
the  learned  would  have  had  the  less  occasion  to  transfer  to  Semites  the  bestial 
deities  of  the  Red  Indians. 

Characteristics. 

If  Al  Is-lam  have  for  supreme  Prophet  Muhammad,  son  of  A'bdu  llah,  the 
figurehead  of  Arabism,  both  secular  and  religious,  is  the  patriarch  Abraham.  So 
much  is  this  so,  that  instead  of  here  speaking  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
Ishmaelite  Arabs  in  the  abstract,  let  us  look  at  them  through  their  type  and 
father.  It  may  be  difficult  to  determine  how  much  of  the  halo  which  surrounds  the 
patriarch  in  Arabia  is  genuine  and  ancient ;  and  how  much  depends  on  the 
ideas  of  later  ages  having  been  thrown  back  into  his  time  by  Judaism  and 
Islamism.  But  we  have  already  ventured  to  regard  it  as  possible,  that  the 
memoirs  of  the  leaders  of  Israel  which  the  Kur-an  contains  formed  the  common 
legendary  heritage  of  all  the  great  divisions  of  the  Semites  long  ages  before  they 
became  Islamic.  Credulity,  we  know,  is  apt  to  be  carried  to  extremes ;  but  so 
also  is  the  opposite  quality.  The  myth  theory  in  historical  investigation  is  like 
calomel  in  medicine  :  used  scientifically  it  proves  serviceable ;  in  rash  hands  it  is 
capable  of  turning  all  the  past  into  a  desert.       In  an  atmosphere  of  pure  scholar- 


1  On  the  track  between  I'rik  and  Mecca,  Ibnu  'r 
Ra-shid's  standard,  carried  half-flying,  half- furled,  on 
a  tall  dromedary,  guides  the  pilgrims. 

2  The  long  loose  shirt  of  unbleached  (and  too 
often  unwashed)  hnen,  reaching  nearly  to  the  ankle, 
which,  when  the  weather  is  mild,  forms,  night  and  day, 
the  single  garment  of  Bedouin  men  and  women,  is 


called,  in  desert  speech,  ka-mis.  Ca-nii-sa  or  cainesia 
was  a  Roman  soldier's  word,  and  the  Arabs  may  have 
got  it  from  the  legionaries  of  the  Syrian  frontier. 

3  The  Abyssinian  in  "  falling  on "  vociferates  his 
own  name  and  honours  ;  the  Bedouin,  the  name  of 
his  sister  or  little  daughter.  The  invocation  of  "lady- 
loves "  is  a  refinement  not  yet  attained  by  Semites. 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS    COME  FROil  ? 


109 


ship,  at  Bonn  or  Berlin,  attempts  to  resolve  the  patriarch  of  the  Arab  race  into 
a  mere  oriental  Theseus  may  meet  with  favour ;  but  hardly  so  where  we  are  now 
writing,   beside  the  blue  Euphrates. 

Perhaps  the  question  of  whether  Abraham  should  be  called  an  Arab,  or,  as  in 
Deut.  xxvi.  5,  a  "  wandering  Aramaean, "  is  not  a  very  important  one.  Sprenger 
says  with  admirable  brevity  and  directness,  "  All  Semites  are,  according  to  my 
conviction,  successive  layers  of  Arabs."  ^  At  all  events,  the  father  of  the 
Hebrews  was  essentially  a  nomad;  a  man  of  flocks  and  herds  and  tents  (Heb. 
xi.  9).  But  beyond  that,  the  routine  of  pastoral  life  had  been  varied  in  his 
case  by  a  round  of  adventurous  travel.  Above  all,  he  had  seen  the  civilisation 
of  Egypt^ — source  of  light  and  leading  for  so  much  of  the  ancient  world.  If 
traditions  guaranteed  by  the  widest  acceptance  may  be  followed,  the  cult  of  his 
father  Terah,  in  which  were  images,  was  rejected  by  him.  Perhaps  from  his 
intercourse  with  Egyptian  sages,  perhaps  through  other  educative  influences,^  he 
held  a  more  spiritual  conception  of  the  Divine  than  others  did.  In  secular  matters, 
also,  he  was  full  of  experiences.  He  knew  that  an  area  under  corn  will  feed  far 
more  people  than  it  will  do  if  kept  as  pasture.  All  round  the  "  oaks  of  Mamre 
which  are  in  Hebron"-^  (Gen.  xiil.  18),  his  cultivation  spread;  the  agricultural 
succeeded  the  nomadic  stage ;  and  the  foundations  were  laid  of  that  later  epoch 
when  the  ideal  of  every  Israelite  was  to  dwell  under  fruit-trees  of  his  own  planting. 
If  the  fragments  relating  to  Abraham  which  are  pieced  together  in  Genesis  be  read 
apart  from  the  supernatural  element,  it  will  be  perceived  how  much  the  Hebrew 
horde-leader  had  in  common,  both  personally  and  in  respect  of  what  Americans 
call  "  surroundings,"  with  the  great  pastoral  figures  of  Euphrates  land  now.  See 
him  first  in  his  daily  life,  as  shown  in  ch.  xviii.  1-8,  deep  in  the  duties 
of  hospitality.  And  here  it  may  be  proper  parenthetically  to  notice  the  dash 
of  foreign  colouring  which  is  introduced  into  the  Western  copy  of  this  picture 
through  the  seating  of  him  at  his  tent  -  door.  The  very  feature  which  distin- 
guishes the  Semite  tent  from  the  tents  of  all  non-Arab  nomads  is  that  it  has 
no  door,  or  even  special  doorway.  Instead  of  being  round  like  the  Turk-u-man's, 
Avith  but    a    churlish    aperture    in   the  centre ;   great   or  small   it  forms   an   oblong 


1  V.  Alte  Geogr.  Arabiens  (Bern,  1S75),  p.  293. 

2  The  Kur-an  (S.  vi.)  contains  the  following-  repre- 
sentation :  And ivhen  the  night  oversliadowed  him  (^\s- 
ra-him),  he  saw  a  star.  He  said,  this  is  my  Lord:  and 
when  it  disappeared,  he  said,  I  love  itot  the  evanescent. 
And  when  he  saw  the  moon  iiprisi?!g,  he  said,  this  is 
my  Lord:  and  when  it  set,  he  said,  were  it  not  that 
my  Lord  do  guide  me,  surely  I  were  of  the  people  who 
have  lost  the  way.  AndwJien  he  saw  the  sun  uprising, 
he  said,  this  is  my  Lord,  this  is  greater :  and  when  it 


set,  he  said,  O  people,  verily  I  am  clear  of  that  which 
ye  associate  \with  God] :  verily  I  have  set  my  face 
towards  Him  who  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth, 
turning  to  the  right  way :  a?id  I  am  not  of  those  who 
atti-ibute  to  God  a  partner. 

3  Hebron,  situated  about  20  miles  S.  of  Jerusalem,  is 
called  to  this  day  Al  Kha-lil,  in  memory  of  Abraham. 
It  is  one  of  the  few  existing  rivals  of  Damascus  in 
antiquity. 


I  lO 


THE  BREEDERS    OF    THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


booth,  closed  at  the  back  and  ends,  but  having  its  front  as  hospitably  open  as 
its  owner's  heart  is.  In  the  original  the  word  is  pctah,  which  means  opening. 
If  another  rendering  than  door  could  be  suggested,  and  for  sat  something  like 
reclmed  resting  on  an  elbozo  substituted,  the  pose  would  be  more  lifelike.  Fol- 
lowing out  this  fancy,  we  just  now  turned  up  the  text,  half  in  hopes  of  find- 
ing that 'the  youngling  "tender  and  good"  fetched  by  Abraham  for  his  guests 
was  in  Arabic  not  a  calf  but  a  lamb  —  for  the  nomad  Arab  despises  horned 
cattle  as  part  of  the  estate  of  townsmen.  But  the  word  is  ben  bakar — in  Arabic 
as  in  Hebrew,  ji'(??«zo-  of  a  coiu :  not  ra-Jicl,  a  ewe  lamb  —  the  rikJil  or  ra-khil 
of  Arabic.^  x^fter  a  foray,  the  Bad-u  may  chance  to  be  thus  provided  ;  but  the 
difficulty  of  "lifting"  slow-travelling  oxen  is  as  recognised  and  sad  a  fact  with 
him  as  that  of  marching  off  stacks  of  corn  was  with  our  own  rievers  of  lone  aeo. 
A  calf  of  the  "wild  cow"  or  bovine  antelope  may,  it  is  true,  be  run  into  by  his 
greyhounds  ;  but  the  calf  which  Abraham  presented  was  from  "  the  herd  "  :  and 
the  colouring  is  by  so  much  the  less  Arabian.  And  yet  it  is  impossible  to  read 
the  Biblical  books  in  these  Euphrates  pastures,  without  a  feeling  of  wonder  being 
experienced  at  the  permanence  of  oriental  scenes  and  characters — that  is,  in  parts  of 
the  East  which  have  escaped  the  grip  of  Europe.  The  correspondence  of  Abra- 
ham's with  modern  Bedouin  hospitality  in  the  absence  from  both  of  intoxicants,  was 
noticed  in  another  context  as  a  fact  perhaps  not  devoid  of  significance.  The  chief 
object  wanting  to  help  the  verisimilitude  is  the  coffee-pot  :  but  not  even  in  Muham- 
mad's time,  far  less  in  Abraham's,  was  the  black  juice  now  so  dear  to  Arabs  known 
among  them.^     A  second  tableau,  that  in  ch.  xiv.,  showing  the  patriarch's  conduct 


'  Whence  of  course  the  name  of  Jacob's  trans- 
Euphrates  wife  (and  cousin)  Rachel ;  whose  acts  and 
traits  as  given  in  Genesis — notably  her  woman-craft  in 
concealing  in  her  camel-saddle  the  teraphiiu  (prob. 
images  of  family  -  gods)  which  she  had  stolen  from 
her  father  Laban  (ch.  xxxi.  34,  35) — are  typical,  if  we 
except  the  idols,  of  tent -life  on  the  Euphrates  still. 
Rachel's  tomb  near  Bethlehem  is  one  of  the  many 
other  shrines  elsewhere  noticed,  which  Jews,  Chris- 
tians, and  Mushm  unite  in  honouring.  The  name 
Ke-bil-rah  which  is  given  to  it  in  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures, signifies  in  Arabic  a  place  of  burial  generally. 
A  modern  Muslim  structure  of  some  pretensions  now 
forms  the  descendant,  through  a  long  hne  of  suc- 
cessive marks  or  pyramids,  of  the  original  grave- 
stone set  up  by  Jacob  (Gen.  .xxxv.  20). 

-  The  traditions  about  the  discovery  by  the  Arabs 
of  their  now  indispensable  substitute  at  once  for  food, 
stimulant,  medicine,  and  occupation,  are  not  veiy  trust- 
worthy.    Perhaps  they  found  the  fruit  or  berry,  by 


them  called  bunn,  in  their  own  country.  Perhaps  they 
had  it  from  abroad,  and  afterwards  introduced  its  cul- 
tivation. Their  view  of  it,  at  all  events  at  first,  appears 
from  their  calling  the  decoction  of  it  kah-wa — an  an- 
cient Arabic  word  for  wine.  Between  this  kah-iua  and 
Kafta,  an  Abyssinian  district,  the  choice  lies  of  a  deri- 
vation for  the  world-wide  name  of  coffee.  Like  almost 
every  other  good  thing,  this  precious  gift  has  generally 
met  on  its  first  introduction  with  an  unkind  reception. 
In  Arabia  zealots  pronounced  it  one  of  the  intoxicants 
forbidden  by  the  Kur-in.  Somehow  it  became  known  to 
Bacon  that  "  they  have  in  Turkey  a  drink  called  coffee, 
.  .  .  which  comforteth  the  brain  and  heart  and  helpeth 
digestion."  But  the  new  drink  did  not  appear  in 
England  till  the  middle  of  the  1 7th  century.  Straight- 
way a  royal  proclamation  was  put  out  against  it ; 
because  of  the  retaiUng  of  it  {i.e.,  in  coffee-houses) 
"being  used  to  nourish  sedition,  spread  lies,  and  scan- 
dalise great  men."  On  that  failing,  oppressive  taxation 
was  tried,  but,  thanks  to  smuggling,  ineffectually. 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS    COME  FROM? 


Ill 


as  a  leader,  though  of  a  less  primitive  stamp  than  the  other,  is  in  its  way  fraught 
with  illustration.  His  nephew  Lot,  after  entering  Canaan  with  him  from  Haran 
(Har-ran  of  Arabs  ^),  long  a  halting-place  of  Terah  and  his  horde  in  their  progress 
from  "  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,"  ^  had  separated  from  him  at  Bethel,  to  settle  down  in 
the  "cities  of  the  Plain."  When  after  thus  turning  townsman  Lot  was  made  a 
prisoner,  in  what  seems  to  have  been  a  tribal  raid  on  Sodom,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered how  Abraham,  on  hearing  of  it  from  a  fugitive,  started  off  with  318  of  his 
following,  just  as  a  Shekh  of  the  Sham-mar  would  do  now ;  overtook  the  raid- 
ers ;  fell  upon  them  by  night  and  smote  them ;  drove  them  before  him  from 
Dan  to  Hobah,  north  of  Damascus  ;  recovered  the  plunder,  "  and  also  brought 
again  his  brother  Lot,  and  his  goods,  and  the  women  also,  and  the  people." 
On  the  same  occasion,  when  the  mysterious  priest  of  Supreme  El,  "  Melchize- 
dek.   King    of  Salem,"  '^    came   out  to   meet   Lot's   rescuers,    Abraham    acted   just 


1  Name  to  this  day  of  a  well-watered  district,  and 
all  but  vanished  town,  on  the  Bi-likh,  above  its  junc- 
tion with  the  Euphrates,  in  the  north-western  corner 
of  Al  Ja-zi-ra. 

2  In  Gen.  xi.  31,  "  Ur  of  the  Chaldees"  is  explicitly 
mentioned  as  the  locality  from  which  Terah  "  went 
forth  .  .  .  to  go  into  the  land  of  Canaan.''  In 
V.  28,  the  same  place  is  called  the  "  land  of 
nativity"  of  the  horde.  But  unfortunately  there  is 
nothing  written  to  show  decisively  where  Ur  was. 
Stephen,  in  his  speech  before  the  Sanhedrim,  placed 
it  by  implication  in  "  Mesopotamia"  (Acts  vii.  2)  :  but 
it  is  not  known  whether  he  used  that  name  in  its 
vaguest  and  widest,  or  in  its  more  defined,  sense  {v.  p. 
70,  et  f  n.  I,  supra).  In  Dr  R.  Pococke's  magnificent 
folios  (Lond.  1 745),  A  Desc7-iptio7i  of  the  East,  and  some 
other  Countries,  vol.  ii.  p.  1 59,  we  find,  "  Many  learned 
men,  and  the  Jews  universally,  are  of  opinion  that 
'  Ur  of  the  Chaldees '  is  the  place  called  Ourfa  by  the 
Arabs,  to  which  the  Turks  give  the  name  of  Roi-ha, 
or  Rou-ha  ;  and  which  is  generally  agreed  to  be  the 
antient  city  of  Edessa  ; "  and  further,  "  The  Jews 
say  that  this  place  is  called  in  Scripture  Otcr-casdim, 
i.e.,  the  fire  ofChaldea;  out  of  which,  they  say,  God 
brought  Abraham  ;  and  on  this  account  the  Tal- 
mudists  affirm  that  Abraham  was  here  cast  into  the 
fire,  and  was  miraculously  delivered."  When  wander- 
ing in  1S87  over  the  steppe  land  between  Sinjar  and 
Mons  Masius  in  which  is  Urfa,  we  felt  the  same 
sense  of  Abraham  ^^■hich  one  does  of  the  "  Duke  "  (of 
Buccleuch)  in  southern  Scotland.  Eveiywhere  was 
Abraham's  Mosque,  Abraham's  Well,  or  something 
that  was  Abraham's.     If  local  traditions  bear  any  evi- 


dential value,  then  has  the  mixed  pastoral  and  agricul- 
tural land  of  Paddan-aram  some  claim  to  be  identified 
^'^'ith  the  family  home  of  Abraham.  On  the  other  hand, 
modern  scholars  (rendering  Ur,  not  by  fire,  but  as  a 
place-name,  and  guided  by  the  suggestion  which  is  in 
Kas-dim  =  Chaldaans,  that  Ur  must  be  in  Chaldaea)  go 
at  least  400  miles  lower  down  for  an  identification — 
viz.,  to  the  Ur2i  of  the  Assyrian  inscriptions,  where  are 
now  the  ruins  of  Al  Mu-kai-yar  (commonly  written 
Mu-gair),  in  the  Babylonian  mud-flat.  The  American 
people  have  spent  a  great  many  dollars  in  having  ex- 
ca\'ations  made  at  this  site.  In  Gen.  .xxiv.  a  glimpse 
of  Abraham's  fatherland  is  opened,  in  connection  with 
the  fetching  from  it  of  a  maiden  for  his  son  Isaac. 
The  details  therein  given  have  been  read  by  us,  both  in 
the  Euphrates  marsh  land  round  Al  Mu-kai-yar,  and 
on  the  Urfa  plateau.  In  the  latter  locality  the  veri- 
similitude is  striking,  and  in  the  former  not  so.  Al 
Mu-kai-yar,  though  now  upwards  of  100  miles  from  the 
head  of  the  Gulf  of  Persia,  must  anciently  have  been  a 
maritime  town.  Wells  are  not  among  its  character- 
istic features.  Even  at  Baghdad,  where  gravelly  layers 
more  or  less  qualify  the  alluvium,  a  well  which  we 
once  caused  to  be  dug  in  the  hard  desert  collapsed 
the  first  winter. 

^  The  piece  introducing  the  Canaanite  high  priest 
whose  blessing  Abraham  valued  is  relegated  by  mod- 
ern critics  to  "  post-exilic  "  times  ;  and  is  declared  to 
be  quite  unhistorical.  The  fact  seems  worth  stating, 
that  neither  Al  Kur-an,  nor,  so  far  as  we  can  dis- 
cover, the  floating  lore  of  the  .A.rabs,  knows  anything 
of  Melchizedek. 


112 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  II. 


as  an  d-kid}  or  leader  of  Bedouin  Arabs,  now  does  to  win  or  maintain 
a  name  for  generosity,  in  foregoing  his  own  portion  of  the  recovered  booty, 
while  claiming  their  shares  for  his  companions.  Other  parallelisms  will  presently 
be  noticed  between  the  traits  displayed  by  modern  Bedouin  Arabs  and  the  tradi- 
tional character  of  Abraham.  Here  we  are  tempted  to  speak  of  a  certain  ancient 
vestige,  much  associated  with  the  Patriarch,  in  which  it  has  lately  been  thought 
that  there  is  guidance ;  and  that  is  circumcision.  The  quasi-sacramental  character 
borne  by  this  custom  among  the  Jewish  descendants  of  Abraham  is  answer- 
able for  some  confusion  of  ideas.  In  the  ages  when  criticism.  Itself  dormant,  had 
no  materials  to  work  on,  it  even  was  considered  that  the  fact  of  the  Arabs  not 
circumcising  on  the  eighth  day  after  birth  like  the  Jews,  or  at  any  other  set  time, 
but  whenever  convenient  before  man-growth,  connected  them  in  a  very  special 
manner  with  Ishmael — circumcised,  according  to  Gen.  xvii.,  in  his  \2,th  year.  The 
difficulties  involved  in  the  literal  reading  of  the  Biblical  narrative  were  not  adverted 
to.  Abraham  was  seen  establishing  in  his  following  at  Mamre  on  a  religious  basis 
— with  primitive  lawgivers  a  common  method — a  custom  which  may  have  com- 
mended itself  to  him  on  physical  and  hygienic  grounds  during  his  sojourn  in  Egypt  ; 
where  its  prevalence  long  before  the  Israelitish  captivity  is  attested  by  monuments  : 
and  thereupon  was  assigned  to  him  the  authorship  of  a  practice  which  existed  in 
unrecorded  times,  and  among  the  most  distant  members  of  the  human  family.^ 
-How  in  the  progress  of  time  all  this  has  been  sifted  may  elsewhere  be  read. 
No    Protestant    Church    now   refuses    to    sanction    researches    after    the    ordinary 


1  Literally  knotter  (of  others)  together,  as  for  an 
enterprise.  Under  the  Arabian  tribal  system  it  is 
not  always  that  the  Shekh  is  also  d'-ktd,  or  gJiaz-u- 
leader.  The  Shekhate  certainly  is  hereditary  ;  though 
a  Shekh  who  tried  to  draw  the  bond  of  obedience  too 
tight  would  soon  lose  his  grip.  Every  tribesman  re- 
tains not  only  his  vote,  but  his  absolute  free  will,  in 
all  matters  save  those  leading  up  to  war.  An  elder 
TDrother  may  be  the  Shekh  or  Nestor,  because  of  his 
experience  ;  and  a  younger  the  a' -kid  (with  the  Sham- 
mssja-fd)  because  of  his  activity.  No  man  need  mount 
for  foray  unless  his  blood  warm  to  it.  But  the  owner 
of  a  mare  who  will  lounge  in  the  encampment  when 
the  riders  are  out  will  have  a  sorry  time  of  it.  So 
far  as  mere  razzia  goes,  any  Shekhling  may  ha^'e  an 
innings  as  a'-kid.  A  time  and  place  of  assembling  are 
fixed  by  him  ;  then  according  to  the  response  given 
a  plan  is  formed.  Out  of  the  booty  every  man  gets 
something  —  one  a  camel,  another  a  mare  ;  in  the 
making  of  which  distribution  the  a'-kid's  generosity 
is  proved.  When  A'n-tar  boasts,  in  his  poem,  of  seek- 
ing the  fight,  but  holding  his  hand  from  the  spoils,  not 


merely  the  Najdian  ideal,  but  equally  the  Abrahamic, 
is  represented. 

2  Among  the  sheerest  savages  of  the  modern  world 
are  the  S.  African  Bechwana,  in  whom  from  all 
accounts  are  no  religious  vestiges  ;  yet  their  lads  are 
circumcised.  In  the  heathen  hordes  of  Madagascar 
the  same  piece  of  trimming,  performed  amid  drunken 
orgies,  marks  the  inclusion  of  their  youths  among  the 
tribe's  warriors.  On  the  Amazon,  in  the  South  Seas, 
and  among  Australian  aborigines,  circumcision  is 
practised.  Rising  in  the  scale,  in  ancient  times 
it  formed  a  usage  of  civilised  peoples  of  Central 
America.  With  Abyssinian  Christians  it  is  general. 
What  has  kept  it  out  of  Europe  is  not  so  much  the 
temperate  climate — to  Western  people  shy  of  water 
its  value  would  be  even  greater  than  to  half-amphibious 
races — as  the  prejudice  conceived  against  it  owing  to 
its  association  with  Judaism  and  Islamism.  Never- 
theless, two  military  surgeons  have  lately  stated  to 
us  that  the  rising  generation  of  our  countrymen  show 
signs  of  taking-  to  it. 


CHAT.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS    COME  FROM? 


"3 


human  methods  into  the  origin  and  structure  of  each  separate  writing  which  is 
contained  in  the  Biblical  literature.  On  points  of  historical,  as  of  physical, 
criticism,  advantage  is  taken  of  every  help  which  science  offers.^  And  thus  it 
happens  that  nowhere  is  the  inference  of  Abraham  having  come  out  of  Arabia 
more  led  up  to  than  in  a  recent  monograph  on  circumcision  by  a  clerical  in- 
vestigator. The  high  authority  quoted  ^  does  not,  indeed,  concern  himself  with 
the  origin  of  the  Arabs.  In  dealing  with  his  subject  proper,  he  however  dis- 
covers in  a  certain  passage  in  Exodus '^  traces  of  the  Arabian  origin  of  Jewish 
circumcision.  In  gathering  in  this  result,  he  brings  forward  indications  of  El,  or 
"Jehovah,"  having  originally  formed  a  tribal  deity  of  Arabia}  So  that  if  the 
further   we    advance    the    greater    seems    the    probability    of    Israel's    having    had 


'  The  reader  who  has  not  inquired  into  these  subjects 
may  possibly  appreciate  the  information  that  educated 
opinion,  after  centuries  of  disputation,  now  inclines  to 
one  of  two  extremes.  Critics  of  the  more  trenchant 
school  tell  us  that  the  narratives  in  our  Bibles,  what- 
ever they  may  be,  are  not  historical.  The  majority 
are  satisfied  with  thinking  that  a  copj'ist's  note  or  a 
redactor's  commentary  may  in  divers  places  have  be- 
come fused  with  the  Hebrew  manuscripts  ;  none  of 
which,  we  believe,  are  older  copies  than  the  7th 
or  8th  century  A.D.  The  complexity  of  the  issues, 
and  the  importance  of  the  judgment  pending,  are 
against  the  probability  of  an  early  adjustment.  To 
qualify  any  one  effectively  to  approach  the  question 
from  the  literary  side,  not  merely  special  training  is 
essential,  but  a  mastery  of  the  Hebrew,  Arabic, 
Aramaic,  Syriac,  Assyrian.  Phoenician,  and  Moabite 
languages  ;  also  a  knowledge  of  the  evidence  which 
the  monuments  and  cuneiform  tablets  of  Western 
Asia  and  Egypt  are  from  time  to  time  revealing. 
Therefore  it  is  not  surprising  that,  in  hopelessness  of 
so  vast  an  equipment  ever  being  available,  enfants 
pej'diis  of  the  secular  army  are  in  our  day  entering  the 
strong  place  through  numerous  posterns. 

2  Rev.  J.  K.  Cheyne,  D.D.,  Oriel  Prof,  of  Interpre- 
tation of  Scripture,  Oxford  :  in  Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  v. 
p.  790. 

^  Our  reference  is  to  the  fragment  in  ch.  iv.  25,  26, 
narrating  how  Moses'  Midianitish,  i.e.  Bedouin  Arab, 
wife,  Zipporah,  on  a  certain  journey,  when  Jehovah 
sought  to  kill  Moses,  ascribed  it  to  the  neglect  of  cir- 
cumcision in  his  family,  hastily  circumcised  their  son, 
and  thereby  appeased  the  deity.  See  Prof  Cheyne's 
rendering  of  this  passage  in  the  reference  cited  in  the 
preceding  footnote.  But  Wellhausen  explains  it  more 
clearly,  in  his  art.  MoSES,  in  Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  xvi.  p. 
S61,  fn.  I.  What  the  Arab  woman  did  with  the  am- 
putated portion  was,   not  to  "  cast  it  at  his  (Moses') 


feet"  as  appears  both  in  the  authorised  and  the  re\'ised 
\-ersions,  but  to  touch  another  part  of  his  body  luith  it, 
as  a  sign  that  the  circumcision  of  the  child  was  substi- 
tuted for  that  of  the  klia-tan,  or  bridegroom.  In  Arabic, 
the  same  word  {kha-ta-na)  ■v\'hich  means  circumcising 
also  means  the  making  of  a  feast  to  which  people  are 
invited  because  of  a  marriage  and  a  circiuncision . 
Capt.  Burton  {Pilgrimage  to  Mecca  and  Medina,  vol. 
iii.  p.  80,  f.n.).  Prof.  Robertson  Smith  (Letters  to 
Scotsman  newspaper,  1880),  and  other  travellers  in 
Arabia,  heard  of  nations  in  which  circumcision  is 
held  over  to  be  performed  at  the  time  of  marriage. 
It  serves  as  a  kind  of  ordeal  for  adult  youths,  be- 
fore they  are  accounted  full  tribesmen.  The  surgery 
which  they  then  suffer  is  said  to  be  of  an  aggravated 
description  ;  and  the  bride  witnesses  it,  and  if  the 
patient  tiinch,  refuses  to  have  him  for  her  husband 
(Doughty,  vol.  i.  p.   128). 

Al  Kur-an  nowhere  mentions  circumcision ;  but 
commentators  so  interpret  certain  words  in  it  mean- 
ing pm-ity  or  purification.  Muhammad  was  content 
to  leave  the  practice  where  he  found  it  —  a  ^^•ell- 
established  national  usage.  In  Arabian  towns,  and 
far  inore  so  in  Persia,  religious  and  symbolical  con- 
ceptions ha\-e  grown  into  it.  We  have  even  seen 
Indians — needless  to  say  Shiites — before  beginning  to 
write  a  letter,  snip  off,  or  fold  back,  the  upper  right- 
hand  corner  of  the  paper,  in  token  of  its  having  been 
"purified,"  or  for  aught  that  we  know  "sacrificed." 
But  all  such  "  ritualism "  is  foreign  to  Arabia. 

*  To  support  the  \\e.\\'  of  Israel  having  first  known 
El  in  Arabia,  and  continued  in  Palestine  to  regard 
that  as  his  habitation,  out  of  which  he  "  marched  "  to 
fight  for  them  on  special  occasions,  Judg.  v.  4  and 
Hab.  iii.  3  are  cited  by  one  school  of  Biblicists.  Seir 
and  Edom  in  the  former,  equally  with  Teman  and 
Paran  in  the  latter  passage,  are  Arabian  places. 


114 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK    II. 


an  Arabian  history  before  settling  in  Palestine,   the  signs  of  it  are  at  least  well 
authenticated. 

In  next  essaying  to  connect  the  Bedouin  Arabs  with  Abraham  through  certain 
aspects  of  their  manners,  we  know  that  the  ground  will  not  bear  too  strong  conclu- 
sions ;  nor  can  we  here  even  make  the  most  of  it  without  anticipating  surveys  which 
are  reserved  for  future  chapters.  It  will  appear  in  the  sequel  that  Islamism  is  a 
townsman's  creed  or  profession ;  and  Bedouinism  a  desert  product.  But  with  regard 
to  the  latter,  the  difficulty  already  stated  is  always  present  of  adjudging  in  the 
several  traits  of  the  Bedouin  how  much  is  percolated  Islamism,  and  how  much  is 
really  ancient  material.  This  remark  is  in  the  fullest  degree  applicable  to  the 
very  first  Bedouin  feature  which  it  here  occurs  to  us  to  mention,  primitive  Arabian 
monotheism.  In  how  far  this  has  come  down  from  Abraham,  and  in  how  far 
it  is  traceable  to  other  sources,  is  a  very  mixed  question.  And  so  in  regard  to 
perhaps  the  next  strongest  lineament  of  Bedouin  character — the  love  of  entertaining 
strangers.  Or  rather,  there  is  here  even  a  greater  need  of  caution  in  respect  of 
artificial  glosses.  For  without  the  freest  use  of  hospitality,  there  could  be  no  life  or 
movement  within  the  Arabian  desert.  In  England,  before  railways,  the  case  was 
slightly  similar.  Nevertheless,  the  Bad-u's  service  of  a  guest  has  many  special 
features.  It  is  not  merely  that  to  be  a  Bedouin  is  to  be  hospitable — hospitable  not 
with  the  idea  of  entertaining  angels  unawares,  persons  capable  of  helping  on  a 
son,  or  leaving  one  a  legacy ;  not  in  the  sense  of  gathering  together  people  who 
would  rather  dine  at  home  ;  but  in  that  of  truly  ministering  to  the  tired  and  hungry. 
However  poor  the  inmates  of  a  tent  may  be,  no  one  is  ever  allowed  to  enter  it 
and  leave  it,  without  eating  of  the  best  which  it  contains.  The  softest  carpet,  or 
fleeciest  sheepskin,  is  always  spread  for  the  stranger.  Born  trafficker  as  the  Bad-u 
is,  he  will  not  sell  bread,  or  milk,  or  butter.  In  travelling  from  Baghdad  south- 
ward, one  of  the  first  signs  of  nearing  Najd  is  that  the  villages  have  no  bread- 
shops.  Hardware  and  chintzes,  brought  from  Bombay  by  those  w^ho  go  there  with 
horses,  are  exposed  for  sale,  but  not  the  staff  of  life.  Now  in  all  this  the  Bedouin 
loves  to  think  that  he  follows  his  "  Father  Abraham."  The  stories  of  the  "  Friend 
of  God"  with  which  Muhammad  seasoned  his  addresses  do  not  come  much  in 
his  way.  But  there  is  a  legend  of  the  Patriarch  which  is  not  in  the  Kur-an, 
and  not  in  Genesis,  but  in  the  breasts  of  men  and  women,  and  in  secular  poems 
— how,  when  the  evening  meal  was  ready,  he  would  refuse  to  taste  it  till  some 
"  son  of  the   road "   should  arrive  to   share  it ;  ^  and  that  is   one   of  many  others 


1  Some  may  remember  how,  in  one  of  his  master- 
pieces, the  "  Bij-stan,"  or  Garden,  Sa'-di  has  worked 
up  this  legend  into  a  didactic  piece  inculcating  tolera- 
tion. One  day  "  the  Friend,"  on  receiving  a  stranger, 
and  seeing  him  dip  his  hand  in  the  dish  without  call- 


ing on  God,  angrily  turned  him  out.  Whereupon  God 
rebuked  him,  saying  :  These  hundred  years  have  I 
fed  and  clothed  him  ;  to  thee  is  one  minute  of  him 
intolerable?  What  if  he  worship  fire?  wilt  thou 
therefore  draw  back  the  hand  of  charity  ? 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE   DID    THE  ARABS    COME  FROM? 


IIS 


which  passes  from  mouth  to  mouth  in  the  black  tent  cities.  Not  only  "the 
young  ravens  which  cry,"  but  every  living  creature,  receives  its  food  from  God  in 
the  simple  faith  of  the  Bad-u  :  and  no  greater  favour  can  be  shown  to  him  than 
when  a  brother  partakes,  as  from  him,  of  his  appointed  portion. ^ 

Traditions. 

On  the  whole,  perhaps,  the  Kur-an  is  more  copious  in  its  references  to  Abra- 
ham than  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  are.  In  one  Su-ra  are  two  important  notices  of 
him  :  in  the  first,  as  supernaturally  receiving  the  command  to  purify  the  Ka'-ba 
of  Mecca ;  ^  and  in  the  second,  as  engaged  in  raising  the  foundations  of  the  same 
structure,-^  assisted  by  his  son  Is-ma-i'l.  But  the  Bible  episode  of  the  banishment 
of  Hagar''  does  not  appear  in  the  Kur-an;    according  to  which,  Ishmael,  and  not 


'  A  Persian  poet  thus  expresses  this  idea  : — 

Each  has  his  portion  allotted — his  own  special  dole  for   the 

day: 
His,  not  another's,  the  food,  though  it  may  not  be  laid  on  his 

tray. 
But  on  thine.     Then  rejoice  that  with  thee  the  provision  for 

him  has  been  stored  ; 
Rendering  thanks  to  thy  guest  who  eats  of  his  own  at  thy 

board. 

-  This  story,  in  so  far  as  it  invoh'es  merely  Abra- 
ham's having  followed  Hagar  to  Al  Hi-jaz,  offers  no 
difficulty.  But  when  the  Patriarch  is  depicted  as 
reshaping  and  adapting  to  a  purer  cult  the  Mecca 
temple,  at  least  these  two  questions  will  be  asked  : 
Is  not  the  part  thus  assigned  to  him  mere  Koranic 
scene-painting?  Is  it  so  that  the  Arab  Baitu 'llah  at 
so  remote  an  epoch  underwent  such  transformation  ? 
To  the  former  there  is  here  room  for  only  this  answer, 
that  among  travelling  orientalists,  Burton,  and  among 
sedentary,  Freytag,  support  the  conclusion  that  Mu- 
hammad drew  these  inaterials  from  Arabian  sources. 
The  second  question  is  more  difficult.  It  is  not  in 
doubt  that  the  "  ancient  house "  when  the  Prophet 
first  saw  it  was  garnished  with  idols.  The  cult  was 
that  of  "gods  of  nations,"  each  protecting  and  dom- 
inating but  its  own  sept  or  circle  ;  with  for  "  God 
over  all,"  and  God  for  great  occasions,  Allah.  A 
spiritual  conception  of  this  universal  Allah  supplied 
the  Reformer  with  his  starting-point.  The  elevation 
of  him  to  a  strictly  monotheistic  pedestal,  with  the 
degradation  of  all  his  ancient  enemies  and  rivals, 
necessarily  followed  ;  and  therein  was  Is-lam.  But 
whether  any  prophet  before  Muhammad  had  ever 
preached  this  to  the  Arabs  is  a  question  involving 
many  difficulties.     V.  in  Index  I.,  art.  Ha-nif. 


'  Ka-wd-i'd,  generally  rendered  foundations,  may 
equally  mean  any  supporting  posts  or  pillars j  from 
the  two  side -posts  of  a  door,  up  to  the  grandest 
columns.  Therefore  the  text  quoted  does  not  neces- 
sarily lend  a  basis  to  the  common  Islamic  belief 
connecting  the  beginnings  of  the  Ka'-ba  with  Abra- 
ham. In  architecture,  as  in  poetry  and  history, 
Semites  have  a  delightful  fashion  of  adding  part  to 
part  at  any  time,  instead  of  giving  themselves  up 
to  regular  plans.  One  of  Muhammad's  '  Sayings '  is  : 
Man's  every  work  yields  him  a  retiir?i  except  build- 
ing. The  Prophet's  own  abode  in  Medina  ^^•as  in 
the  form  of  a  row  of  huts.  From  time  to  time,  as  is 
well  known,  he  "  took,"  like  Abraham,  "  another  wife  "  ; 
under  the  sj'stem  proper  to  the  epoch  when  the  world 
was  emptier  than  now ;  and  the  idea  had  not  grown 
up  of  leaving"  half  the  female  population  of  every  town 
to  "wither  on  the  virgin  thorn,"  and  assume  the  oc- 
cupations of  the  other  sex.  On  all  such  occasions, 
instead  of  building  a  new  wing  or  story,  he  would 
merely  ask  his  neighbour  Ha-rith  to  "  take  ground  " 
slightly  to  one  flank,  and  so  make  room  for  another 
humble  tenement  of  unburnt  bricks  and  palm-branches. 
In  a  Kuranic  passage  in  which  it  is  explicitly  stated 
that  the  Mecca  Ka'-ba  was  the  first  tabernacle  or  struc- 
ture of  any  kind  {bait)  ever  reared  for  mankind  (to 
worship  in) — the  standing-place  or  oratory  of  Ib-ra- 
him  is  mentioned  among  the  notable  spots  contained 
in  it  :   v.  S.  iii. 

*  To  illustrate  the  view  now  generally  accepted, 
that  the  "  Pentateuch,"  even  in  its  narrative  parts, 
is  "  a  kind  of  mosaic,"  in  which  elements  taken  from 
two  older  writings  are  interwoven.  Prof  Wellhausen 
thus  observes  :  "  Ishmael  was  fourteen  years  old 
at  the  birth  of  Isaac,  and  thus  would  be   seventeen 


ii6 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


Isaac,  was  the  son  whom  Abraham  was  commanded  to  sacrifice.  Al  Islam  is 
left  dependent  for  the  storj^  of  Hagar  on  traditions,  in  which  the  main  incidents  of 
the  description  in  Gen.  xxi.  9  are  held  to  have  come  down.  Sound  Muslim  com- 
mentators do  not  find  the  spot  where  Hagar  settled  anywhere  authoritatively 
indicated  ;  and  accordingly  they  have  conjecturally  looked  for  it  in  divers  places. 
That  preferred  by  them  generally  is  the  palmless  and  stony  tract  in  the  south 
of  Al  Hi-jaz,  now  forming  part  of  the  Ha-ram,  or  Holy  territory,  on  which  was 
afterwards  planted  the  "mother  of  towns,"  Mecca.  To  this  clay  the  well  called 
Zam-sam  contained  within  the  Mas-jidu  V  ha-rdm,  or  sacred  worshipping--^\-d,c^  at 
Mecca,  is  supposed  to  be  the  identical  spring  at  which  Hagar  and  Is-ma-i'l  drank. 
All  this  framework  so  well  serves  the  Arabian  genealogies  already  glanced  at, 
assigning  the  nation  of  Ku-raish,  or  Fihr,  of  which  was  Muhammad,  to  the  "  seed 
of  Abraham,"  ^  that  the  tendency  is  to  deny  to  it  the  smallest  fragment  of  sub- 
stantial foundation.  The  strong  air  of  Europe  perhaps  is  needed  to  foster  such 
root-and-branch  conclusions.  Writing  where  we  now  are,  it  is  enough  to  men- 
tion that  as  authentic  secular  history  contains  no  trace  of  Ishmael,  it  cannot 
possibly  confirm  the  derivation  of  the  Kuraish  from  him.  Nothing  is  known  of 
the  disciplinary  processes  which  first  developed  the  Kuraish  ;  but  their  position  on 
the  Red  Sea  in  very  early  times  gave  them  advantages  over  the  nations  of  the 
interior.  When  the  curtain  rises  on  them — about  400  a.d. — they  held  in  their 
grasp,  as  surely  as  if  it  had  come  down  to  them  from  Abraham,  the  Meccan 
Bethel ;  even  at  that  early  period,  under  the  Eastern  system  of  ham  ti-jd-ra,  ham 
zi-d-ra,  as  the  Persians  have  it,  or  commerce  and  pilgrimage  in  one,  a  place  of 
cosmopolitan  congress.  About  the  same  time — fifth  Christian  century — the  in- 
dependent clans  of  Arabia  rose  in  revolt  against  the  exactions  of  the  kings  of 
Yemen  ;  just  as  they  would  now  do  if  too  hard  pressed  by  Constantinople  Pashas. 
Emboldened  by  success,  and  led  by  a  native  Jonathan  called  Ku-laib^'  or  the  little 


when,  some  three  years  later,  Isaac  was  weaned. 
But  how  does  this  accord  with  Gen.  xxi.  9  sq., 
where  Ishmael  appears  not  as  a  lad  of  seventeen 
but  as  a  child  at  play  [pnjJiDi  ver.  9],  who  is  laid 
on  his  mother's  shoulder  (-s'er.  14),  and  when  thrown 
down  by  her,  in  her  despair  (ver.  15),  is  quite  unable 
to  help  himself?" — Vide  art.  "Pentateuch,"  Ency. 
Brit.,  vol.  xviii.  p.  507.  In  any  case,  Ishmael's 
separation  from  his  family  cannot  have  been  per- 
manent, seeing  that  (i)  he  assisted  at  Abraham's 
burial,  Gen.  xxv.  9;  (2)  Esau  took  his  daughter  to 
wife  at  a  time  when  he  (Esau)  dwelt  in  Beersheba 
(xxviii.  9);  (3)  he  (Ishmael)  "abode  in  the  presence 
of"  (more  correctly,  eastward  from)  "all  his  breth- 
ren "  (xxv.  18).    For  a  luminous  view  of  these  subjects, 


at  once  historical  and  Christian,  see  The  Old  Testa- 
ment in  the  Jewish  Cliurch,  by  Prof  W.  Robertson 
Smith,  sec.  edit.,  1892. 

1  V.  ante,  p.  94  ;  et  p.  99,  in  f  n.  i. 

2  Dim.  ol  kalb  =  canis ;  Biblical  Caleb.  The  fact  of 
this  Arabian  Wallace  figuring  as  Ku-laib,  with  the 
more  important  fact  of  Ba-m't  Kalb,  or  Race  of  Dog, 
forming  the  gentile  name  of  a  Najdian  nation,  may 
seem  to  countenance  the  totem  theory.  But  passing 
over  the  circumstance  of  Europe  likewise  having  its 
families  of  Chiens,  Cheynes,  MacCheynes,  &c. ;  and 
rejecting  as  too  improbable  Guarmani's  explanation 
that  the  Ba-nu  Kalb  have  their  name  from  a  heredi- 
taiy  hoarseness  due  to  exposure,  and  productive  of 
barking;  if  in  Arabia,  as  elsewhere,  the  clog's  own 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS    COME   FROM? 


117 


dog,  after  they  had  thrown  off  the  southern  yoke  their  aims  grew  wider.      During 
nearly  two  centuries  the  words  of  one  of  their  poets  well  describes  them  : — 

No  sooner  do  we  carry  to  a  people  the  quern  (of  war),  than  lo, 
At  the  first  touch  of  it,  they  are  flour  ! 

Like  the  skin  under  the  mill,  all  eastern  Najd;i  like  the  handful 
Thrown  into  the  hopper,  every  mother's  son  of  the  Ku-dha-a'. 

— A'mr. 

The  times  must  have  been  favourable  for  the  development  of  prowess,  both  national 
and  individual.  Elsewhere  the  reader  may  see  it  chronicled  how,  in  the  great  con- 
geries of  the  Mus-ta'-ri-ba  clans,  the  Kuraish  came  forward;  till  at  last  {c.  570  a.d.) 
a  child  was  born  to  them  whose  destiny  it  was  to  throw  into  deep  shadow  all 
that  had  happened  in  Arabia  before  hiin.  The  Kuraish  retain  to  this  day  no  small 
portion  of  the  prestige,  or  moral  influence,  which  Muhammad  and  his  achievements 
conferred  upon  them.  When,  in  1517,  fate  compelled  them  to  surrender  the  keys 
of  the  Mecca  shrine  to  the  Osmanli  Sultan,  Selim  I.,  the  original  scheme  of  Islam- 
ism  must  have  seemed  to  them  and  others  obscured  beyond  retrieval.  But  it  is 
wonderful  how,  in  Arabia  as  elsewhere,  old  ideals  can  be  fitted  to  new  facts.  Suc- 
cessive Sultans  have  treated  Al  Hi-jaz  as  tenderly  as  if  they  had  been  Arabs  of  the 
Prophet's  lineage.  A  prince  of  the  Kuraish,  elected  from  the  descendants  of  A'li, 
acts  as  a  kind  of  double  to  the  Turkish  Wa-li  of  the  "  holy  territory,"  like  the  Delhi 
emperors  to  the  East  India  Company's  Governor-Generals,  but  possessed  of  far 
more  sway  and  influence.  This  is  The  Sha-rIf  par  excellence ;  or  "Grand  Sherif," 
as  Europeans  say,  since  all  the  kin  of  the  princely  houses  which  reckon  descent 
from  the  Prophet  bear  the  title  of  S/ia-rif,  or  pre-eminent .  On  State  occasions  in 
Al  Hi-jaz,  when  the  Osmanli  officials  proper  appear  in  gold  brocades  and  ribbons, 
the  Sha-rif  in  his  Arab  cloak  and  head-dress  recalls  the  primitive  ideal,  according  to 
which  it  was  essential  that  the  "  Commander  of  the  Believers,"  and  head  of  the 
Arab  empire,  should  belong  to  the  Kuraish. 

Our  limits  do  not  permit  us  to  dwell  on  the  important  references  to  Ishmael's 
twelve  sons  which  are  contained  in  Gen.  xxv.  13-17.  Slight  as  those  references  are, 
the  glimpse  which  they  open  is  distinctly  that  of  twelve  main  tribes  of  Arabs.      Nor 


better  qualities  have  led  to  the  adoption  of  his  name 
by  human  beings,  it  is  not  surprising.  The  Arabs, 
it  is  true,  will  not  eat  the  dog,  and  do  not  like  to 
kill  him.  But  on  small  enough  occasion  they  will 
kick  and  stone  him.  In  their  towns  they  protect 
him  as  a  kind  of  natural  guard  and  sca\-enger. 
Outside,  they  cultivate  and  value  him  for  antelope- 
coursing,  without  admitting  him  to  intimacy.  Grey- 
hounds obtained  from  Tigris  or  Euphrates  settle- 
ments,  accustomed    to    have    their    food    thrown    to 


them,  and  to  drink  from  the  river,  will  not  at  first 
come  near  a  dish  even  when  coaxed  to  do  so,  owing 
to  the  beatings  which  they  have  received  at  home 
on  that  account, — not  an  unnecessary  discipline  where 
cooking  and  eating  are  perfonned  on  the  ground. 

'  I.e.,  all  eastern  Najd  had  been  turned  by  them 
into  a  battle-ground.  A  skin  or  cloth  is  spread  under 
the  oriental  handmill,  to  keep  the  flour  from  mingling 
with  the  sand. 


ii8  THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  ii. 

is  any  materially  different  view  consonant  with  the  facts  of  history.  The  iirst-born 
was  Nebaioth,  or  Nebajoth,  patriarch,  unquestionably,  of  a  great  pastoral  people — 
if  not,  as  seems  on  the  whole  probable,  of  the  ancient  Nabathsean  nation.  In 
the  second  son,  Kedar,  with  Arabs  Kai  -  dar,  the  correspondence  between  the 
Bible  description  and  Arabian  traditions  is  even  more  conspicuous.  From  him, 
and  not  from  the  sons  of  Ishmael  generally,  Arab  chroniclers,  it  should  be  stated, 
derive  the  pedigree  of  the  Mus-ta'-ri-ba.  How  in  Canticles  the  "  black  tents 
of  Kedar"  are  used  for  simile,  just  as  the  black  tents  of  the  Sham-mar  might  be 
used  to-day,  has  already  been  noticed  :  that  Kedar  and  Nebaioth  formed  in 
Isaiah's  time  two  typical  nations  of  Arabia  appears  from  a  well-known  passage. 
If  here  there  be  ground  of  difference,  it  is  not  on  the  essential  facts,  but  on  the 
interpretation  of  them.  Are  we  to  infer  that  Abraham  and  Ishmael  were  Arabs  ? 
Or  that  Ishmael,  entering  Arabia  as  a  refugee  or  immigrant,  imparted  new  blood, 
as  well  as  new  and  special  characteristics,  to  all  these  mighty  nations  ?  For  the 
reasons  already  stated,  it  is  probable  that  the  veil  which  hangs  over  this  subject 
will  not  soon  be  lifted. 

It  now  only  remains  to  take  leave  of  the  central  question  out  of  which  so 
many  branches  have  grown  :  are  the  considerable  contrasts  which  are  noticeable 
between  the  Yemenite  and  the  Ishmaelitic  Arabs  consistent  with  ultimate  race  unity  ; 
or  do  they  force  us  towards  the  supposition  that  the  two  populations  own  separate 
ethnic  origins  ?  Long  ago,  not  much  hesitation  was  felt  on  topics  of  this  nature. 
Modifications  superinduced  by  slight  enough  causes  were  made  to  support  race 
classifications  ;  just  as  in  another  branch  of  science  misunderstood  casual  varia- 
tions enormously  contributed  to  the  multiplication  of  so-called  species.^  But 
let  us  not  here  pursue  similar  lines.  The  pastoral  tendency,  or  habit,  in  its 
several  phases,  forms,  as  has  been  seen,  the  chief  basis  of  divergence  between 
the  two  great  divisions  of  the  Arabian  people.  And  so  far  as  that  goes,  we 
see  no  obstacle  to  the  assumption  that  both  partitions,  notwithstanding  many 
fortuitous  admixtures,  are  of  one  and  the  same  stock.  Having  before  us  the 
substantial  fact,  already  noted,  that  several  of  the  most  clannish  and  nomadic 
nations  of  the  Arab  peninsula  are  of  those  not  reckoned  to  the  Mus-ta'-ri-ba,  an 
appeal  to  argument  is  unnecessary.  Otherwise  we  might  remind  the  reader  how 
the  disposition  to  "go  forth,"  or  wander,  runs  in  Homo  sapiens.  Ha-fiz  the  Su-fi, 
at  once  the  gravest  and  the  gayest  of  the  Persian  sages  and  poets,  says  in  Spring — 

Go  fetch  a  book  of  poems,  and  off  with  thee  to  the  country  ! 

Is  this  a  time  for  lecture-rooms,  and  the  arguments  and  expositions  of  the  expounder  ? 


1  Darwin,   in    The   Origin   of  Species,   informs   us     I     sometimes  set  down  the  male  bird  as  of  one  species, 
that  classifiers,  misled  by  differences  of  plumage,  have     I     and  the  female,  of  another  ! 


CHAP.   II. 


WHERE  DID    THE  ARABS   COME  FROM? 


lie, 


And  so  in  Europe,  the  sedatest  preacher  from  time  to  time  must  have  his  scamper. 
Or  if  siofns  Hke  these  be  rerarded  less  as  survivals  than  as  mere  demands  for 
relaxation,  how  many  a  slip  of  bookish  formal  folk  • —  not  dissipated,  but  only 
Bohemian — in  his  rooted  dislike  of  settled  ways  and  artificial  people,  turns  his 
back  on  "progress,"  and  sets  off  to  live  with  kangaroos  in  the  Australian 
bush.  With  tendencies  of  this  description  latent  in  the  folds  of  our  own  civil- 
isation, how  much  stronger  must  the  wandering  instinct  be  in  peoples  whose 
"environment"  compels  them  to  it!  We  have  seen  that  in  vast  portions  of 
Arabia  man  must  either  be  nomadic  or  disappear  entirely.  The  modifications 
of  character  thus  produced  by  necessity  and  circumstances  have  become  "nature." 
And  a  very  hard  nature  is  the  Bedouin's  ;  his  own  desert  flints  are  soft  com- 
pared with  it.  Some  have  argued  that  it  is  merely  the  sparseness  of  his  hordes, 
and  the  slight  temptation  offered  by  him  and  his  to  foreigners,  which  have 
so  long  kept  him  above-ground.  This  should  be  allowed  for  up  to  a  certain 
point.  The  multitudinous  and  ever-changing  masses  of  the  Bedouin  oppose  but 
the  same  kind  of  resistance  to  kingly  giants  as  Saladin's  silken  cushion  would 
have  done  to  Coeur  de  Lion's  sword.  Their  pastoral  wealth  does  not  much 
excite  the  cupidity  of  Governments.  Nevertheless,  their  own  stubborn  temper, 
with  the  martial  virtues  born  of  the  shepherd  life,  must  have  had  a  large  share  in 
their  preservation.  Every  Bad-u  realises  that  much  of  the  strength  of  his  untram- 
melled state  depends  on  isolation.  One  of  his  stock  sayings  is,  Adh  dhill  fi- 1  hadhr, 
or  subjection  (is  involved)  in  settling  dozvn.  Houses  and  gardens  and  standing  crops 
form  hostages  to  "  our  lord  the  king  "  in  a  way  that  flocks  and  herds  do  not ;  and 
that  is  one  reason  why  he  will  not  have  them.  During  an  immensely  long  past, 
he  has  contrived  by  his  methods  to  retain  his  nationality  and  independence ;  while 
all  that  his  building,  farming,  sedentary  congeners  have  got  by  their  methods  has 
been  subjugation  following  on  subjugation,  by  Abyssinians,  Persians,  Egyptians, 
Romans,  and  Turks.  We  have  seen  how  for  these  last  hundred  years  the  Con- 
stantinople Government  has  been  now  hammering,  now  subsidising,  the  Arabian 
Bedouin,  with  the  view  of  making  them  into  new  material  both  for  military  con- 
scription and  for  the  revenue  officer.  We  have  also  seen  that  this  jDolicy  has  met 
with  some  success.  The  remarkable  thing  is,  that  that  success  has  been  so 
limited.  For  this  result,  as  has  just  been  observed,  the  hardihood  of  the  Bedouin 
nature,  evincing  itself  in  dogged  adherence  to  the  ancient  paths,  is  chiefly  account- 
able. The  Osmanli,  in  the  teeth  of  their  professed  religion,  permit  the  sale  of 
perhaps  the  greatest  known  transmutative  force,  especially  for  primitive  peoples, 
arrack.i     But  not  even  in   I'rak  has  any  Bedouin  nation  worthy  of  the  name  put 


^  This  word  is  a  modern  importation  into  Europe, 
probably  by  way  of  India,  from  Arabic  ;  in  which 
a'rak  means  Juice.     Jews  and  Christians  make  rd-ki 


(corruption  of  aV<2/4) ;  in  Baghdad  chiefly  from  dates; 
and  in  Mosul  from  za-bib,  or  raisins. 


120  THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  ii. 

out  the  hand  to  take  it.  None  can  say  how  long  this  conflict  between  traditional 
and  modern  influences  will  maintain  itself;  but,  judging  from  appearances,  the 
ancient  Bedouin  system  may  last  long  enough.  So  far,  speaking  as  an  eyewitness, 
even  after  all  that  has  happened  in  I'rak,  the  Persian  Gulf  provinces,  and  Ja-bal 
Sham-mar,  the  "wild-ass"  nature  is  but  slightl)^  affected  by  the  strategies  and 
enticements  of  the  tamer. 

"  Like  commoners  of  air, 
We  wander  out,  we  know  not  where,"  ^ 

now  as  of  yore  describes  the  life  of  the  Mus-ta'-ri-ba.  All  mankind  is  gregarious; 
the  feature  of  peculiar  interest  which  attaches  to  the  Arabian  Bedouin  is,  that  while 
refusing  to  substitute  the  bonds  of  citizenship  for  the  group-bond,  they  develop 
within  their  separate  masses  a  surprising  degree  of  humanity  and  organisation. 

^  Burns,  in  Epistle  to  Davie. 


121 


CHAPTER    III. 


OF  THE   BEDOUIN   AS    HORSE-BREEDERS. 


TO  make  a  roll  of  the  Bedouin  nations  of  Arabia  would  require  many  writers, 
and  many  years  of  work  and  travel.  These  vigorous  hordes  rival  the  scud 
above-head  in  the  sky,  in  their  tendency  to  change  front  and  form.  Within  them,  it 
is  true,  are  main  or  central  bodies  which  possess  comparative  fixity.  But  in  respect 
of  secondary  divisions  and  subdivisions  ;  swarmings  off  and  coalescings  ;  margins, 
surfaces,  and  projections, — such  is  their  fluidity,  now  under  internal,  and  now  exter- 
nal, force  or  pressure,  that  a  register  of  them  would  soon  be  obsolete.  Therefore 
in  this  book  but  slight  attempts  have  been  made  to  arrange  them  in  regular  order. 

When  Najd  was  being  looked  at,  its  principal  nomadic  peoples  were  presented 
to  the  reader  under  the  broadest  stock-headings  ;  and  before  proceeding  further,  we 
would  do  as  much,  and  no  more,  for  their  migrated  kindred,  the  Ae-ni-za  and  the 
Sham-mar.     The  main  divisions  and  subdivisions  of  the  former  nation  may  thus  be 

tabulated  :  — 

National  Name  :  AE-NI-ZA. 


I'MA-RAT. 


A'i-yash. 

Alam-dhai-yan. 

Da-la-ma. 

Hib-lan. 

Ih-si-ni. 

Ij-lal. 

Ji-mai-shat. 

Ma-sa-i'b. 

Ma-ta-ri-fa. 

Sa-la-tin. 

Shim-Ian. 

Su-gur. 

Su-wai-li-mat. 

Zib-na. 


SB  A'. 


A'ra-fa. 

Di-wam. 

I'ba-dat 

Im-si-ka. 

Ma-sa-ri-ba. 

Ma-wa-hib. 

Mu-wa-i-ja. 

Mu-\vai-ni'. 

Ra-sa-lin. 

Uff-mu-sa. 


FID-AN. 


A'ja-ji-ra. 

Dhin  Im-ni'. 

Ghu-bai-yin. 

Ikh-ri-sa. 

Ji-da-a'. 

Sa-ri. 


RU-WA-LA. 


Dugh-man. 

Ga-^'-ji-ba. 

Ga-wa-ji-ba. 

If-ri-ja. 

Na-sai-yir. 


IJ-LAS. 


Al  A'bdi  '11a. 
A-sha-ji-a'. 


WALD    A'Ll. 


Ih-sa-na. 


2^ote.~l\\  the  above  headings,  the  def.  article  al  (save  once,  where  it  joins  itself  to  the  name)  is  left  to  be 
prefixed  by  the  reader.     The  Al  in  Al  A'bdi  'Ua  is  not  the  article,  but  Al  a  synonym  of  Ba-nfi,  Children. 


122 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


The  above  table  might  be  infinitely  amplified  ;  and  like  all  the  other  contents 
of  these  pages,  it  is  subject  to  correction.  The  names  which  are  given  in  it  have 
been  received  from  the  Arabs  ;  ^  and  most  of  them  are  traceable  to  roots  which  are 
in  Arabic  dictionaries.  This  has  appeared  in  the  process  of  transcription.  The 
Roman  forms,  when  they  deviate  from  our  adopted  system,  do  so  in  order  that 
the  European  reader  may  the  better  recognise  the  names  on  hearing  them  from 
the  lips  of  the  Arabs. 


Passing  to  the  Sham-mar,  the  reader  will  find  in  Lady  A.  Blunt's  record 
of  her  own  and  her  husband's  visit  to  them-  tables  of  their  several  branches, 
and  of  their  allies  and  tributaries,  drawn  up,  as  is  stated,  by  "a  committee  of 
Arabs,"  and  revised  by  Shekh  Faris.'^ 

A  beginning  was  made  by  Doughty,  in  the  face  of  many  difficulties,  towards 
unravelling  the  skein  of  the  Sham-mar  kinship.  Working  it  out  in  Jabal  Sham- 
mar,  he  found  the  drift  of  intelligent  opinion  about  the  Sham-mar  to  be  that, 
instead  of  even  theoretically  or  traditionally  forming  children  of  one  father,  they 
represent  a  comparatively  modern  aggregation  of  peoples  of  diverse  Arab  stocks ; 
drawn  together  in  the  first  instance  by  the  ties  of  a  common  location  or  locations,  a 
common  cause,  and  common  Interests  ;  and  only  gradually  and  imperfectly  cemented 
through  intermarriages.  His  principal  informant — "  a  lettered  nomad  of  the  Ae-ni-za 
Sba'  living  at  Ha-yil  " — told  him,  that  Arabs  of  both  the  Yemenite  and  the  Ish- 
maellte  divisions  are  included  in  the  Sham-mar  nation  ;  and  that  the  family  tree  of 
Muhammad  ibn  Ra-shid  himself  has  its  roots,  through  the  great  clan  A'bda,  In  the 
Yemenite  stock  of  Kah-tan.  "  The  other  fendis  (septs)  of  the  Sham-mar,"  the 
same  authority  states,*  "are  many,  aiid  not  of  one  descent:  Sin-ja-ra ;  Tu-man  ; 
As-lam  ;  [Ad]  Du-ghai-rat ;  Ghai-tha  ;  A'mud  ;  Fad-da-gha  ;  Tha-bit ;  A'-fa-rit ; 
Iz-mail ;   [Al]   Him-zan  ;  Sa-yih  ;    Ikh-ri-sa;  Zo-ba  ;   Sham-mar   To-ga."  ^ 


^  No  claim  to  originality  is  here  intended.  Nearly- 
all  the  names  are  in  the  works  of  travellers.  Ours 
has  merely  been  to  collate,  arrange,  and,  last  but  not 
least,  transliterate. 

2  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  ii,  vol.  ii.  pp.  i88,  1S9. 

3  V.  ante,  p.  72,  et  f.n. 

^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  2,  vol.  ii.  p.  41. 

'  The  above  names  have  been  verified  through  an 
old  henchman  and  genealogist  of  the  late  Shekh  Far- 
han  [v.  supra,  p.  72).  Layard's  classification,  made 
in  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  is  as  follows  : — 

"  Five  sects  or  subdivisions  of  the  great  tribe  of 
Sham-mar,  renowned  for  their  braveiy  and  \'irtues, 
and  supposed  to  be  descended  from  the  same  stock, 
make  up  together  the  Ikh-ri-sa  branch,  of  which  the 
hereditary  chief  is  Far-han.     To  belong  to  the  Ikh-ri- 


sa  is  an  honourable  distinction  among  the  Sham-mar. 
The  five  septs  are  the  Boraij,  the  Fad-di-gha,  the 
Alayian,  the  Ghishm,  and  the  Hathba.  Of  this  last, 
and  of  the  family  of  Al  JVIuhammad,  was  the  cele- 
brated Bedouin  chief  Sfiik.  The  other  clans  forming 
the  tribe  of  Sham-mar  are  the  A'bda,  Sa-yih  (divided 
into  As  Subhi  and  As-lam),  Tha-bit,  A'mud,  The- 
ghav-gheh,  Ghai-tha ;  Dhi-ray-rie,  Ghu-fay-la,  and 
Iz-mail.  All  these  tribes  are  again  divided  into 
numerous  septs.  The  Sa-yih  have  nearly  all  crossed 
the  Euphrates,  owing  to  a  blood-feud  with  the  rest  of 
the  Sham-mar,  and  have  united  with  the  Ae-ni-za. 
The  Raf-fi-di,  however,  a  large  section  of  the  Ae-ni-za, 
have  left  their  kindred,  and  are  now  incorporated 
with  the  Sham-mar." — Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  31, 
p.  260,  f.n. 


CHAP.   III. 


OF  THE  BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS. 


123 


All  the  divisions  of  the  Bedouin  have  not  the  same  rules  as  horse-breeders. 
Different  tribes  have  different  standards ;  and  produce  different  results.  This  fact 
is  widely  known  in  Arabia,  '^o  jam-bdz^  with  a  colt  for  sale  will  admit  that  he 
is  of  I'raki  breeding,  if  it  be  possible  to  father  him  on  the  Sham-mar.  And 
just  as  "  Sham-ma-ri  "  is  thus  a  better  show-name  than  "  Fraki,"  so  is  "  Ae-ni-za" 
a  better  name  than  "  Sham-ma-ri."  When  a  mare  from  the  Ae-ni-za  passes 
among  the  Sham-mar,  her  new  owner  is  proud  of  her  because  of  where  she  comes 
from.  But  when  one  of  the  Ae-ni-za  takes  a  Sham-mar  mare  in  foray,  it  is  not 
so.  His  inclination  is  to  doubt  her;  and  it  is  only  after  the  fullest  verification 
of  her  history  and  pedigree  that  he  will  breed  from  her.  As  a  matter  of  pre- 
caution, this  is  right ;  but  when  it  amounts  to  a  prejudice  against  Sham-mar-bred 
stock,  it  is  a  mistake.  All  over  the  world,  and  equally  in  man  and  beast,  good, 
bad,  and  indifferent  are  everywhere  present.  Especially  in  Arabia,  where  merchants 
and  pilgrims,  travellers  and  soldiers, 

"  Stained  with  the  variation  of  each  soil "  - 

between  the  Tigris  and  the  Indian  Ocean,  are  constantly  concentrating  at  ports, 
selling  their  cattle,  and  transferring  themselves  to  ships,  the  circulation  of  horse- 
flesh, apart  even  from  Al ghaz-xi  and  robbery,  is  as  brisk  as  that  of  money.  Just 
as  the  shilling  handed  to  one  by  the  village  shopkeeper  may  not  so  long  ago  have 
left  the  purse  of  Royalty,  so  it  is  possible  that  a  horse  bought  even  of  a  Baghdad 
Jew  may  be  desert-bred  and  of  noble  race.  This  is  not  the  poetical  view,  but 
we  commend  it  to  our  readers  as  the  practical  one.  Nay,  where  horses  are 
concerned,  the  truth  goes  further.  Arabian  money  is  not  generally  taken  to 
India  or  Australia  :  even  seeds  distribute  themselves  only  within  definite  circles  ; 
but  where  is  the  clime  to  which  man  does  not  carry  the  animals  subject  to  him  ? 
As  we  write  these  lines  on  the  banks  of  the  Tigris,  there  is  before  us  a  Houdan 
hen  hatched  in  Central  India  from  an  ^g'g  laid  under  the  shadow  of  the  Him- 
alaya, by  a  bird  brought  all  the  way  from  France  ! 

"  O  Httle  did  my  mother  ken, 
The  day  she  cradled  me, 
The  lands  I  was  to  travel  in, 
Or  the  death  I  was  to  die  !  "  ^ 

is,  if  we  except  the  cradling,  as  applicable  to  our  domestic  animals  as  to  ourselves. 


1  Jam-bdz,  in  the  sense  of  horse-dealer,  will  often 
occur  in  the  sequel.  It  is  a  Persian  word,  meaning 
onewho  ^lays  luith  his  life.  It  is  chiefly  in  Prak  that 
they  say  jam-baz  for  horse-dealer.  In  Najd  they  use 
has-sdn,  from  hi-sdn,  a  horse.  Where  horse-dealers 
from  Najd  are  present,  it  is  better  not  to  use  the  name 


jam-baz  ;  for  in  Arabia  proper  it  has  almost  the  same 
meaning  as  liar  I 

"  King  Henry  IV.,  Part  I.,  Act  i.  sc.  i. 

3  Ballad  of  The  Qiieen^s  Marie,  first  published  in  Sir 
W.  Scott's  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border. 


124 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


The  poor  little  piece  of  poultry,  if  stolen  one  of  these  nights  from  her  roost,  and 
sold  to  a  steamer's  cook,  may  travel  round  the  world,  and  be  made  into  grill  in 
the  English  Channel !  Nevertheless,  it  is  good  to  notice  which  tribes  of  the 
desert  do,  and  which  do  not,  cling  to  the  old  traditions,  under  which  men  did 
not  hesitate  to  ride  a  mare  a  month's  journey,  to  mate  her  with  a  horse  of 
fame.  It  might  be  going  too  far,  to  say  that  a  falling  away  in  Arab  horse-breeders 
begins  as  soon  as  they  issue  out  of  Najd.  Much  depends  on  the  situation  of  the 
new  pastures ;  the  facilities  for  leading  the  old  life ;  and  above  all,  the  extent  to 
which  the  pulsations  of  the  central  heart  of  Arabia  are  felt.  Thus,  as  already 
hinted,  the  Ae-ni-za,  though  longer  separated  from  Najd  than  the  Sham-mar, 
are  still  as  noted  for  strictness  of  stud-work  as  the  latter  are  for  laxity.  We 
have  heard  that  fifty  years  ago  the  Sham-mar,  rather  than  send  a  mare  to  an 
inferior  horse,  would  let  her  run  without  a  foal.  On  the  Kha-bur  and  the  Ja-gha- 
jagh,  stories  linger  of  children  of  Sfuk  who  have  died  in  harness  uttering  with 
the  latest  breath  the  pedigree  of  their  mares,  to  make  their  captors  prize  them  : 
a  trifle  savage  ;  yet  infinitely  higher  than  the  Trojan  champion's  supreme  concern 
about  the  ransom  of  his  own  dead  body,  after  Achilles'  lance  had  found  the  fatal 
opening.  Layard  relates  how,  in  1850,  west  of  Mosul,  on  chancing  to  drop  on 
an  encampment  of  the  Tai  Arabs,  he  found  them  much  cast  down  after  a  beating 
from  the  Sham-mar,  in  which  forty  of  their  mares  had  been  captured.  The 
while  their  Shekh  was  deep  in  gloomy  consultation  with  his  warriors  over  their 
misfortune,  an  emissary  from  the  victorious  Sham-mar,  wrapped  in  his  ragged 
cloak,  sat  listlessly  among  them,  waiting  to  be  informed  of  the  pedigrees  of  the 
mares  which  he  and  his  people  had  taken  from  them.  Such  a  message.  Sir 
Henry  Layard  continues,  "  might  appear  to  those  ignorant  of  the  customs  of  the 
Arabs  one  of  insult  and  defiance.  But  he  was  on  a  common  errand  :  and  although 
there  was  blood  between  the  tribes,  his  person  was  as  sacred  as  that  of  an 
ambassador  in  any  civilised  community.  Whenever  a  horse  falls  into  the  hands 
of  an  Arab,  his  first  thought  is   how  to  ascertain  its  descent."  ^     It  is  not  to  be 


^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  31,  p.  220.  The  same 
traveller  in  another  work  {Nineveh  and  its  Remains, 
vol.  i.  ch.  iv.)  describes  a  chestnut  mare  belonging  to 
the  then  (1843)  Shekh  Sfuk,  of  the  Sham-mar,  as  "  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  creatures  I  ever  beheld.  As  she 
struggled  to  free  herself  froin  the  spear  to  which  she 
was  tied  she  showed  the  lightness  and  elegance  of 
the  gazelle.  Her  limbs  were  in  perfect  symmetry  ;  her 
ears  long,  slender,  and  transparent ;  her  nostrils  high, 
dilated,  and  deep  red  ;  her  neck  gracefully  arched  ; 
and  her  mane  and  tail  of  the  texture  of  silk.  We 
all  involuntarily  stopped  to  gaze  at  her.  '  Say  Ma.  shd 
Allah,'  exclaimed  the  owner,  who  seeing,  not  without 


pride,  that  I  admired  her,  feared  the  effect  of  an  evil 
eye.  '  That  I  will,'  answered  I,  '  and  with  pleasure, 
for,  O  Arab,  you  possess  the  jewel  of  the  tribe.' "  A 
few  pages  further  on,  it  is  added  :  "  Sfuk  was  the 
owner  of  a  mare  of  matchless  beauty,  called,  as  if  the 
property  of  the  tribe,  Sham-ma-ri-ya.  Her  dam,  who 
died  about  ten  years  ago,  was  the  celebrated  Ktibleh, 
whose  renown  extended  from  the  sources  of  the  Kha- 
bur  to  the  end  of  the  Arab  promontory,  and  the  day  of 
whose  death  is  the  epoch  from  which  the  Arabs  of 
Mesopotamia  now  date  the  events  concerning  their 
tribe.  Muhammad  Amin,  Shekh  of  the  Ju-bur,  as- 
sured me  that  he  had  seen  Sfuk  ride  clown  the  wild  ass 


CHAP.   III. 


OF  THE  BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS. 


125 


imagined  that  this  first  principle  of  desert  horse  -  breeding  has  died  out  among 
the  Sham-mar.  But  while  owning  to  an  impression  that  oyer  Arabia  as  a  whole 
fewer  first-class  horses  now  exist  than  formerly,  in  regard  more  particularly  to 
the  Bedouin  of  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  we  cannot  doubt  that  for  a  considerable  time  past 
they  have  been  going  downhill  as  horse-breeders.  It  is  not  that  they  have  not 
still  many  noble  mares.  Raiding  as  they  always  are  on  the  Ae-ni-za,  there  is  not 
a  mare  in  northern  Arabia  that  may  not  any  day  pass  from  the  Ae-ni-za  to  them. 
Perhaps  it  is  that  they  are  turning  horse-dealers,  and  breeding  recklessly  for 
the  supply  of  town-purchasers.  Hordes  of  them  encamp  every  year  within  a 
day  or  two  of  Baghdad  and  Mosul  ;  and  in  many  personal  inspections  of  the  young 
stock  which  they  bring  with  them  we  have  found  it  of  a  mixed  description.  No 
o'ood  comes  to  nomads  from  intercourse  with  towns.  Of  the  two  rival  hordes  of  the 
sons  of  Sfuk  now,  as  already  seen,  dividing  between  them  Al  Ja-zi-ra  pastures,  one 
holds  to  the  country  round  Baghdad  ;  and  the  other  to  the  deserts  touched  by  Mosul. 
In  both  alike  the  ties  of  blood  or  kindred  find  a  common  centre  in  one  great  family 
of  the  Sham-mar,  that  still  retaining  as  its  gentile  name  the  very  unpoetical  one 
oi  Al  Jar-bd,  or  the  scabby ;  in  pious  memory  of  a  female  ancestor  to  whom 
the  epithet  was  applicable,  the  mother  of  the  first  historical  Fa-ris.  But  the  general 
opinion  is  that  the  Sham-mar  of  the  Baghdad  circuit  are  far  behind  their  brethren 
higher  up  the  Tigris  as  horse-breeders.  Some  regard  this  as  the  natural  conse- 
quence of  the  late  Shekh  of  the  former,  Far-han,  having  fallen  away  from  the  desert 
standards.  Especially  seeing  that,  according  to  the  facts  above  stated,  the  Sham-mar 
as  a  whole  consist  of  a  confused  mixture  of  different  races,  we  would  not  say  that 
this  view  is  beside  the  question.  But  only  this  much  is  here  vouched  for.  Outside 
of  Najd,  the  stricter  methods  of  horse-breeding  are  nowhere  so  carefully  observed 
as  among  the  Ae-ni-za.  Although,  as  just  now  mentioned,  all  the  great  strains  are 
in  the  possession  of  the  .Sham-mar,  and  although  many  of  the  champion  Arabs 
of  the  Indian  turf,  especially  among  the  big  ones,  have  been  bought  as  colts  in 
Sham-mar  camps  towards  Mosul,  yet,  if  we  wanted  blood  Arabians,  and  were  not 
over-disposed  to  trust  to  the  chapter  of  accidents  to  bestow  them  on  us,  we  would 
go  to  the  Ae-ni-za  to  look  for  them.  Among  the  several  subdivisions  of  the 
Ae-ni-za  also,  horse-breeding  touches  diverse  levels.  Certain  tribes,  desirous  of 
keeping  their  mares  always  in  fighting  form,  have  other  ways  of  mounting  them- 
selves than  through   breeding.      For  a  long  time  past,  in   all   the  Ae-ni-za,  the 


of  the  Sin-jar  on  her  back,  and  the  most  marvellous 
stories  _are  cm-rent  in  the  desert  as  to  her  fleetness  and 
powers  of  endm'ance.  Sfuk  esteemed  her  and  her 
daughter  above  all  the  riches  of  the  tribe ;  for  her  he 
would  have  forfeited  all  his  wealth,  and  even  A'msha 


[his  wife]  herself  Owing-  to  the  visit  of  the  irregnlar 
troops,  the  best  horses  of  the  Shekh  and  his  followers 
wei-e  concealed  in  a  secluded  ravine  at  some  distance 
from  the  tents." 


126  THE  BREEDERS   OF  THE  ARABIAN.  book  ii. 

kindreds  of  the  Sba'  and  Fid-an  bear  the  bell  as  horse-breeders,  both  for  quality 
and  numbers.  No  one  who  has  not  seen  the  mares  of  these  two  confederations  in 
one  of  their  vast  encampments  can  adequately  picture  to  himself  what  a  wealth 
of  noble  horse-flesh  has  been  given  to  the  Arabian  Bedouin.  Within  Sha-mi-ya, 
the  Sba'  and  Fid-an  are  spoken  of,  collectively,  as  Al  Bishr.  Judging  from 
the  little  that  is  stated  on  this  point  by  Doughty,^  Bishr  must  form  in  Najd 
a  comprehensive  name  for  all  those  sections  of  the  Ae-ni-za  which  still  inhabit 
their  native  Nu-fiidh  and  deserts.  In  connection  with  these  remarks,  the  reader 
will  bear  in  mind  the  caution  already  given.  Let  no  one  fondly  think  that  that 
must  be  perfection  which  comes  from  this,  or  that,  division  of  the  Bedouin.  The 
true  and  only  talisman  is  the  power  of  knowing  the  Simon  Pure  wherever  it  is  met 
with.  Let  us  neither  be  taken  in  by  the  bead  of  glass  which  happens  to  be  in  the 
diamond-mine,  nor  on  the  other  hand  pass  over  the 

"  gem  of  purest  ray  serene  "  - 

because  it  has  fallen  on  a  rubbish-heap.  Given  certain  outward  signs,  and  points  of 
conformation  ;  and,  provided  that  we  can  have  the  animal,  any  tribe  may  claim  the 
pedigree.  Not  that  pedigree  is  not  at  the  root  of  everything  ;  only  that,  at  all  events 
in  the  strains  of  Araby,  the  highest  known  degree  of  breeding  may  be  inferred  from 
the  outward  signs  alluded  to. 

We  do  not  profess  in  these  pages  fully  to  set  before  the  reader  the  char- 
acteristic traits  and  manners  of  the  Arabian  Bedouin  ;  but,  mainly,  to  afford 
such  glimpses  of  these  nations  as  will  illustrate  the  history  of  their  horses.  To 
some  slight  extent  this  has  been  done  all  along  the  road  already  travelled. 
It  remains  but  to  describe  further  the  framework  in  which  the  Arabian  horse  is 
enclosed  ;  by  which  the  breed  is  moulded  ;  and  beyond  which  it  cannot  develop 
itself.  First  of  all,  then,  and  speaking,  it  will  be  remembered,  for  the  present  of 
horse-breeding  in  the  desert :  the  Arabian  essentially  is  a  war-horse ;  a  knight 
and  gentleman  to  the  manner  born ;  a  goer  out  "  to  meet  the  armed  men." 
It  might  naturally  be  thought  that  the  Bedouin,  having  no  Cabinets  or  Foreign 
Ministers,  would  seldom  find  themselves  set  by  the  ears.  But  in  reality  it 
is  not  so.  Edifying  travesties  occur  within  their  deserts  of  the  operations  which 
diplomatists  prepare  for  soldiers,  in  countries  equipped  with  governments  and 
standing  armies.  When  one  man's  mastery,  or  a  well -woven  tribal  confedera- 
tion, too  much  threatens  the  balance  of  power  in  Najd,  engagements  worthy  of  a 
gazette  may  happen.  In  the  extremely  extended  order  of  the  desert  warfare,  a 
hundred  cavaliers  and  camel-gunners  cover  the  ground  of  a  thousand  ;  and  the  parti- 


Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  2,  vol.  i.  p.  331.  '  Gray's  Elegy. 


CHAP.    III. 


OF   THE  BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS. 


127 


coloured  fluttering  camel-trappings,  like  the  plaids  and  plumes  of  our  Highlanders, 
magnify  size  and  numbers.  According  to  ancient  custom  a  chosen  tent-beauty — 
her  eye  and  voice  more  inspiring  than  the  most  martial  music — seated  in  her 
camel  litter,  moves  like  a  living  standard  in  the  front  rank.^  On  great  occasions 
of  this  kind,  as  the  reader  may  imagine,  the  war-demon  is  usually  well  sated.  In 
the  old  days,  when  no  powder  was  burnt,  the  maiden  was  held  sacred  ;  but  in  these 
times  of  flying  bullets  her  peril  is  greater.  Outside  of  regular  or  irregular  war, 
too,  the  Bad-u  is  full  of  practice.  What  Egypt,  Afghan-istan,  and  India  are  to 
European  nations,  his  wells  and  pastures  are  to  him  ;  if  he  have  no  ambassadors, 
he  is  always  in  his  own  proper  person  affronting  or  being  affronted.  The  ordinary 
movements  of  the  Bedouin  resemble  the  Hebrew  exodus  from  Egypt  :  their  entire 
families,  women,  children,  slaves,  and  cattle,  march  with  them.  Perhaps  almost  as 
many  nomad  infants  first  see  the  light  on  the  line  of  march  as  under  the  tent's 
covering.  When,  during  one  of  these  movements,  two  hostile  hordes  cross  one 
another's  path,  a  collision  is  the  natural  consequence.  So  far  from  proving  hin- 
drances, the  wives  and  daughters  even  of  the  principal  Shekhs  dismount  at  the 
first  shot ;  and,  their  long  dresses  trailing  behind  them,^  act  the  part  of  Plutarch's 
heroines.  Their  tears  are  not  allowed  to  flow.  When  a  wounded  warrior  leaves 
the  fray,  they  receive  him  with  shouts  of  encouragement ;  stop  the  blood  with 
powdered  charcoal ;  and  send  him  back  again.  The  Bad-u's  regular  yawn,  or 
day,  meaning  day  of  foray,  is  a  tamer  matter.  One  great  feature  of  his  tribal 
system  is,  that  for  every  friend  to  whom  it  binds  him  it  gives  him  an  enemy,  or 
a  friend's  enemy,  whom  he  may  harry.  In  one  of  the  Aryan  languages,  the  word 
for  war  literally  means  a  desire  for  coivs.  So  in  Arabic,  hm^b,  while  serving 
for  battle,  includes  the  idea  of  stripping  another  of  his  property.  To  confound, 
or  even  compare,  the  commonwealths  of  Arabian  Bedouin  with  brigands,  would  be 
to  take  up  a  wrong  position ;  but,  sooth  to  say,  if  the  Bad-u  must  not  be  classed 
with  robbers,  just  as  little  can  he  be  called  an  honest  fellow ! 

"  His  morning  thought,  his  midnight  dream. 
His  hope  throughout  the  day  "  ^ 


1  This  picturesque  female  is  called  in  desert  speech 
A'i-fa,  used  as  we  use  cynosure. 

'  Najd  'contains  nations  among  whom  custom  re- 
c|uires  women  of  condition,  while  freely  showing  their 
faces,  to  "hide  their  feet  under  absurdly  long  dresses 
(compare  Hor.  Sat.  i.  2).  If  the  long-robed  ones  were 
excused  from  manual  labour  this  would  be  no  hard- 
ship. But  among  the  Bedouin  even  Shekhs'  wives  are 
kept  constantly  afoot,  not  only  in  minding  their 
children,  collecting  fuel,  pounding  corn,  and  such 
duties,  but  also  in  pitching   and  striking  the  tents. 


and  making  everything  into  loads  for  packing.  Their 
trains  must,  therefore,  often  vex  them  :  for  example, 
in  a  tornado,  when  the  whole  body  of  womankind 
has  to  rush  out  and  support  the  tents.  According 
to  some,  the  morality  of  a  nation  will  always  be 
that  of  its  women ;  but  be  this  as  it  may,  a  fine  phy- 
sique in  a  race's  manhood  demands  a  fine  one  in  its 
women  :  see  the  universal  difference  between  men 
sprung  from  vigorous  mothers  and  those  bom  and 
bred  in  harems. 

^  Hunting-song  well  known  in  India. 


128 


THE  BREEDERS    OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


is  plunder;  but  he  goes  about  it  jauntily.  He  no  more  desires  to  talce  another 
man's  life  than  to  lose  his  own,  for  in  either  case  the  result  would  be  a  perennial 
blood-feud.  Rather  than  drive  his  long  shivering  lance  through  an  enemj',  he 
prefers  to  knock  him  off  his  mare  and  jump  on  her  back.  When  he  is  beaten, 
he  perceives  it  in  a  twinkling ;  drops  his  booty  or  gives  up  his  property ;  and 
thinks  only  of  living  to  try  again.  Every  time  that  he  sweeps  bare  a  pasture, 
he  gathers  more  gear  in  three  days  than  he  knows  how  to  do  in  any  honest 
employment  in  a  lifetime.  When  instead  of  shearing  he  is  shorn,  he  takes  it 
calmly.  He  never  considers  his  losses  irreparable,  any  more  than  a  gambler  does. 
As  to  this,  he  has  a  saying,  suggested  by  the  up-and-down  movements  of  a 
well-bucket — The  foray  is  a  see-saiu ;  now  tozuards,  iioio  azuay  from,  7is}  His 
religion,  such  as  it  is,  well  accords  with  all  this.  The  paganism  of  ancient 
Arabia  had  its  varieties.  The  features  of  it  oftenest  described  in  books,  as 
existing  just  before  the  Flight  in  places  where  civilisation  flourished,  were  special, 
not  generic.  Particularly  in  Mecca,  the  Kuraishite  keepers  of  the  Ka'-ba  under- 
stood the  necessity  of  making  their  cult  and  ritual  theatrical,  if  they  would  draw 
money  into  the  temple  coffers  by  means  of  it.  But  then  as  now  the  Bad-u  proper 
lived  in  a  different  world  ;  caring  nothing  about  townsmen's  carnivals  and  theol- 
ogies ;  satisfied  with  a  religion  which  he  could  carry  about  with  him  anywhere, 
and  feel  it  no  heavier  than  a  peppercorn.  To  make  a  man  a  Muslim,  prayer 
and  fasting  and  almsgiving,  with  at  least  a  smattering  of  doctrine,  are  essential. 
In  respect  of  these  things,  visible  darkness  surrounds  the  Bedouin.  In  their 
blanket  cities  there  is  no  Mu-adk-dhiu,  to  sing  out  the  prayer -call  above  the 
herdsman's  whoop,  and  the  voices  of  sheep  and  camels.  When  it  comes  to 
praying,  they  are  ill  provided.  More  than  a  thousand  years  after  the  reception 
by  Al  Hi-jaz  of  Islamism,  Burckhardt  noted  that  numerous  hordes  of  the  nomadic 
Arabs  possessed  no  religion,  beyond  a  dim  traditional  belief  in  a  Supreme  Being. 
Half  a  century  later,  Palgrave  committed  himself  in  his  usual  sweeping  manner  to 
the  statement  that  the  Sha-ra-rat  Arabs  are  sun-worshippers  now,  as  they  were 
before  Muhammad  uttered  his  warning  that  the  great  day-star  rises  from  among  the 
adherents  of  Satan}  The  desert  of  the  Arabs  is  too  vast  for  any  one  to  say  that  this 
or  that  thing  is  not  contained  in  it.  Our  own  range  has  been  too  limited  to  furnish 
full  conclusions.  Certainly  we  have  met  with  Bedouin  who  were  unprovided  with 
the  simplest  forms  of  prayer.       But  the  most  positive  evidence  would  be  needed 


''■  "  AI harb  si-jAlj  yawn  la-na :  yawn  cilai-nd" 
2  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  7,  vol.  i.  p.  8.     Palgrave, 
by  the  way,  grossly  mistranslates  Muhammad's  '  Say- 
ing.'     He  confounds  karn  =  the  people,  ox  following, 
of  the   Prophet,  with  kirn,  a  horn.      The  absurdity 


of  "the  devil's  horns"  is  thus  read  into  it  by  him. 
Even  if  he  had  no  Arabic  dictionary,  he  should  have 
known  that  Islamism  sternly  prohibits  all  such  pic- 
torial representations. 


CHAP.  III.  OF   THE  BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS.  129 

to  convince  us  that  any  one  in  Arabia  having  pretensions  to  the  name  of  Arab 
prostrates  himself  before,  or  worships,  sun,  moon,  or  star.^  How  largelj^  in  pen- 
insular Arabia  a  softening  of  prehistoric  paganism  has  resulted  from  that  great 
aftermath,  as  Ave  may  call  it,  of  Islamism,  Wahabyism,  will  not  have  escaped 
notice.  What  that  has  done  for  Arabia  between  the  seas,  Constantinople  for- 
malism has  done  for  Arabia  between  the  rivers.  Side  by  side  with  the  use 
of  firearms  and  other  adjuncts  of  civilisation,  praying  and  fast  -  keeping  grow 
apace  both  among  the  Ae-ni-za  and  the  Sham- mar.  Lady  A.  Blunt,  when 
staying  and  journalising  among  the  latter,  after  writing  that  "prayer  as  an 
outward  act  of  religion  is  not  practised  by  the  pure  Bedouin,"  had  to  qualify 
her  statement  by  adding  that  her  Shekhly  host  Fa-ris  "  recites  his  prayers 
daily."-  This  subject  will  reappear  in  another  chapter;  when  the  influence  of 
the  Kuranic  epoch  in  further  knitting  Arab  man  to  Arab  horse  is  being  dealt 
with.  Here  let  us  regard  only  the  grit  of  natural  material — older  than  any 
recorded  patriarch  or  lawgiver  —  which  underlies  and  variegates  Islamism,  as 
survivals  not  dissimilar  underlie  and  variegate  every  other  developed  religion. 
The  thread  of  our  remarks  goes  back,  in  this  context,  to  what  was  said  a 
little  while  ago  of  the  Bad-u's  plundering  habit  running  in  and  out  of  his  theol- 
ogy. The  latter,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  may  be  rudimentary,  and  as  bare  of 
objects  as  the  surfaces  which  he  inhabits  ;  but  at  least  there  is  nothing  bizarre  or 
repulsive  in  it.  The  groundwork  of  it  appears  to  be  an  extraordinary  sense  of 
the  power  and  i^resence  of  God — a  God  unopposed,  and  unopposable,  by  any  devil 
— a  God  to  whom  are  ascribed  every  turn  of  fortune,  and  every  event  that  happens, 
even  when  palpably  due  to  human  laziness,  or  worse.  Thus  in  his  meteorology 
Allah  is  everything.  As  if  the  natural,  especially  pastoral,  life  brought  out 
under  different  skies  the  same  religious  type,  we  never  hear  him  talk  about  the 
weather  without  remembering  the  Lothian  shepherd  who,  on  his  master's  dis- 
approving of  a  rainy  morning,  pointed  out  how  it  "  slockened  the  ewes,  refreshed 
the  trees,  and  was  God's  will."  So  with  him  :  is  it  cloudy  ?  it  is  in  mercy  to  the 
calving  camels.  Is  the  heat  intolerable?  that  is  to  bring  on  the  dates.  Is  the 
season  as  irregular  as,  with  us,  snow  at  midsummer  ?  then  it  is  to  teach  him 
that  these  things  do  not  depend  on  calendars.  \\^hat  luck  means  let  them 
explain  who    understand   it  :    many  of  us,    from   our   talk,    seem   to    believe    in    it 


1  In  a  paper  by  Dr  Wallin  of  Finland,  being  Notes 
of  his  Journey  through  Part  of  N.  Arabia  in  1848,  in 
Journal  Roy.  Geog.  Soc.,  London,  vol.  xx.  1S51,  Part 
II.,  is  the  following  important  statement  : — 

"There  are  not,  as  far  as  I  could  learn,  amongst 
the  nomadic  Bedouins,  nor  in  the  towns  and  villages 


in  the  interior  of  Arabia,  persons  professing  any  other 
religion  than  the  Islam  ;  nor  did  I  e\"er  hear  in  those 
parts  of  Arabia  Avhich  I  visited  mention  made  of  tribes 
or  individuals  suspected  to  be  attached  in  secret  to 
another  creed." — P.  311. 

-  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  1 1,  vol.  ii.  p.  217. 


R 


I30 


THE  BREEDERS    OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  II. 


more  than  in  the  Almightj'.  The  corresponding  word  with  the  Bedouin  is,  na-sib. 
Next  to  Allah,  no  expression  is  more  current  among  them  ;  but  they  mean  by  it 
just  what  our  own  doctors,  from  Augustine  downward,  mean  by  Providence.  Thus 
may,  in  part  at  least,  have  arisen  the  impression  which  exists  in  many  quarters,  that 
God's  sovereignty  is  made  by  Islamism  to  degrade  men  to  puppets.  We  cannot 
here  pursue  this  subject ;  let  us  merely  say,  in  passing,  that  there  never  was  a  greater 
error.  Of  course  when  one  man  submits  to  another  for  the  sake  of  safety,^  he  obeys 
him  ;  but  there  is  no  fatalism  in  that.  Muhammad,  as  has  been  seen,  was  a  master 
of  eloquence,  not  logic.  In  the  heated  pursuit  of  many  themes,  the  effect  of  God's 
absolutism  on  man's  free-will  either  failed  to  strike  him  ;  or,  like  Locke  after  him, 
he  was  content  to  leave  it  a  riddle.  To  express  at  once  the  finality  and  the  im- 
measurable elevation  of  the  divine  supremacy,  he  found  no  words  too  extreme.^  On 
the  other  hand,  just  as  he  cared  not  to  expunge  certain  abrogated  "revelations,"  so, 
in  discoursing  of  men's  actions  and  destinies,  he  suffered  no  thought  of  apparent 
inconsistency  or  contradiction  to  prevent  him  from  depicting  them  as  free  and  con- 
ditional.'^ Arabian  fatalism  is  older  than  Muhammad  ;  older  even  than  Abraham  : 
and  the  view  just  now  presented,  namely,  that  its  strongest  growth  is  among  the 
Bedouin,  supports  this  statement.*  The  Bad-u's  fatalism  is,  however,  a  purely  heathen 
feature;  not  a  dogma,  but  an  intuition.  It  is  only  with  this  life  and  its  portions 
that  it  occupies  itself;  indeed  it  is  almost  certain  that  apart  from  Islamite  teach- 
ing the  Arabian  Bedouin  are  still  as  unconscious  of  future  rewards  and  punish- 
ments as  the  Israelites  were  before  the  Babylonian  captivity.  The  stories  of  witch- 
craft and  bedevilment  which  obtain  varying  degrees  of  credence  among  them 
came  into  the  desert  from  towns  like  Bussorah  and  Medina.  The  very  ancient 
Bedouin  custom  of  tying  a  dead  man's  mare  or  camel  beside  his  grave,  to  die  by 
inches,  involved  only  a  belief  in  man's  consisting  of  two  portions ;  the  body,  which 
dissolves;  and  something  else  which  is  "given  up,"  and  continues  to  live  as  a  ghost. 
It  was  not  that  the  camel  ^  should  go  to  heaven,  or  hell,  or  purgatory ;  but  that 


'   V.  Index,!.,  art.  Is-LAM. 

"-  E.g.,  in  S.  Ixxxvi.  it  is  said  :  And  truly  Allah 
maketh  to  err  whom  He  will,  and  directeth  ariglit 
whom  He  will.     [Comp.  Romans  ix.  i8.] 

2  E.g.,  in  S.  xc.  :  And  have  We  not  sho^vn  him 
[man]  the  two  conspicuous  ways  [of  right  and  Avrong]  ; 
and  he  attempted  not  the  difficult  o?ie. 

And  in  S.  liii. :  Hath  he  [man]  not  been  told 
that  .  .  .  truly  no  bearer  of  a  heavy  load  [sinner] 
shall  ca7-ry  the  burden  of  another  ?  And  truly  there 
is  naught  for  man  save  that  for  which  he  has  striven ; 
and  surely  his  efforts  shall  be  seen  hereafter.  Then 
shall  he  be  requited  with  the  justest  recompense j  and 
imto  the  Lord  is  the  finality. 


And  in  S.  Ixxiv. :  Every  soul  is  pledged  [v/\th  God] 
for  what  it  shall  have  wrought. 

••  Fate's  arrows  never  miss  their  ?nark,  is  a  common- 
place of  Arabic,  as  of  other,  languages. 

A'mr  said — 

Truly  to-day,  and  to-morrow,  and  the  day  after  to-morrow, 
Are  deposited  in  pledge  (with  Destiny),  for  the  bringing  to  pass 
of  events  of  which  ye  have  no  knowledge. 

And  Zu-hair — 

And  whosoever  regardeth  with  fear  death's  causes  will  still  be 
reached  by  them. 

Even  were  he  to  climb  the  sides  of  the  blue  vault  with  a  scaling- 
ladder. 

5  In  Arabic  ba-li-ya ;  q.  v.  in  Index  I.     So  recently 

as  1 78 1,  at  Treves,  a  charger  was  sacrificed  outright 


CHAP.   III. 


OF   THE   BEDOUIN  AS   HORSE-BREEDERS. 


Ill 


she  should  follow  her  master  to  the  underground  place  out  of  which  the  Prophet 
Samuel  was  evoked  against  his  will  by  the  wise  woman  of  Endor.  To  keep, 
however,  to  the  upper  world.  As  came  out  in  another  chapter,  when  the  hospit- 
able ways  of  the  desert  were  under  notice,  all  the  world's  good  and  evil  are 
considered  by  the  Arab  nomad  to  belong  to  God.  When  in  a  fortunate  ghas-tt-  he 
drives  before  him  what  a  Hebrew  lyrist — perhaps  himself  a  Bad-u — graphically 
describes  as  "  hills  of  jDrey,"  his  idea  is  that  he  is  but  taking  what  God  has 
given  to  him.  What  a  very  primitive  religion  his  is  will  appear  from  this  one 
view  of  it.  Yet,  clearly,  it  is  the  cream  of  faiths  for  populations  which  answer 
to  the  southern  traveller's  description  of  the  Celts  of  Scotland:  "They  live  like 
lairds,  and  die  like  loons.  Hating  to  work,  and  no  credit  to  borrow,  they  make 
depredations  and  rob  their  neighbours."  ■'  Whence  it  conies  that,  if  netting, 
snaring,  driving,  night-shooting,  have  made  the  English  poacher's  wily  lurcher, 
raiding  and  tilting,  pursuing,  fleeing,  turning,  twisting,  have  made  the  Bedouin 
courser.  In  a  desert  stave  already  quoted,^  the  reader  ma}^  have  remarked  how 
the  horseman  praises,  not  his  mare's  speed,  but  her  handiness.  Of  the  former 
quality,  much  as  he  will  talk  of  it,  he  can  have  but  little  true  idea  ;  for  whatever 
may  have  been  the  case  in  heathen  times,'^  horse-racing  is  not  now  practised  by 
the  Arabs,  at  any  rate  till  they  go  to  India.  In  the  Parthian  warfare  of 
the  desert,  two  things  make  a  mare  excel  :  the  one,  endurance  ;  and  the 
other,  the  same  o-ift  of  turnino-  and  twistino;  which  distinouishes  the  Arab 
horse  in  India  with  either  a  running  or  a  charging  boar  in  front  of  him.  By 
this  time,  surely,  the  Bedouin's  hatred  of  a  master  has  become  one  of  our 
exhausted  topics.  Even  his  own  Shekhs  have  more  of  respect  from  him 
than  obedience.  Very  few  of  them  could  make  a  tribesman  do  what  he  did  not 
wish  to  do.  If  the  man.  In  his  secret  heart,  inclined  towards  an  action.  It  might 
please  him  to  say  that  he  had  been  coaxed  or  forced  to  do  it ;  but  when 
once  his  feet  are  firmly  planted,  the  cudgel  that  will  move  him  Is  still  to  cut. 
Next  to    this    spirit    of  independence,    as    has    also    been    shown,   what  helps  the 


as  part  of  the  funeral  ceremon)-.  The  horse  does 
not  now  follow  its  rider  to  Sheol,  but  only  to  the 
cemetery ;  whence  it  is  led  back  to  its  stable. 
Among  the  peaceful  and  domestic  Hindus,  not  a 
man's  charger,  or  his  "  weapons  of  war "  (Ezek. 
xxxii.  27),  but  his  wife  was  sent  with  him ;  till  the 
British  power  stopped  the  custom. 

1  Quoted  by  Macaulay,  Hist,  of  E7igland,  cli.  xiii. 

-   V.  ante,  p.  61. 

^  Races  ranked  among  the  divertissements  of  the 
fair  held  in  pre-lslamic  times  near  Mecca.  The 
metaphor  in   the   following   ancient  Najdian  couplet 


opens  a  glimpse  of  some  such  Olympic  contest  : 
horses  riderless  —  usualh'  ten  starters  —  each  horse 
receiving  a  special  name  according  to  his  place 
at  the  finish ;  the  winner,  {As^  Sd-bik  =  the  out- 
stripper  ;  the  second,  \Al'\  Mu-sal-li,  or  tlic  one  at 
the  other's  back,  and  so  on  : — 

If  ever  one  day  \i,e.,  in  some  high  enterprise]  honour's  goal 

have  to  be  made  for, 
Among  us  thou  wilt  find  the  first  horse  and  the  second. 

But  these  performances  \vere  nothing  more  than 
shows.  Horse-racing,  properly  so  called,  is  indige- 
nous to  England. 


132 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


nomad  breeder  is  his  roaming  life.  Tlie  Black  Douglas's  preference  of  the 
"  lark's  song  to  the  mouse's  squeak "  referred  only  to  campaigning ;  and  if 
the  good  Lord  James  had  been  with  Havelock's  column,  as  the  writer  was, 
when  it  forced  its  way  from  the  open  fields  round  Lucknow  into  the  Baillie 
Guard,  or  citadel,  perhaps,  for  one  night  at  least,  the  domestic  thief's  shrill 
chatter  would  have  sounded  like  a  call  to  rest  and  shelter.  No  such  associa- 
tions surround  the  Bedouin.  In  sun  and  rain  and  wind,  the  tent  flapping  in  the 
desert  blast  contents  them.  When  their  mares  are  starving,  they  pass  it  off 
with  one  of  their  sayings  about  plenty  ivaiting  on  servihide,  and  hope  for  better 
times.  In  towns  like  Ha-yil,  Baghdad,  Kar-ba-la,  Damascus,  and  Aleppo,  the  zuoyi 
hoo-oo,  and  other  whoops,  with  which  the  desert  herdsman  pilots  his  interminable 
files  of  camels,  are  familiar ;  but  every  Bad-u,  in  passing  through  a  city,  keeps 
one  eye  behind  him,  like  Rob  Roy  in  Glasgow,  to  see  that  the  door  of  the 
trap  is  not  closing.  The  very  camels  go  beside  themselves  when  first  the  walls 
of  a  town  rise  up  before  them.  The  desert  colt,  with  all  his  courage,  requires 
pressing  before  he  will  bow  his  head  to  pass  through  the  entrance  of  a  stable. 
In  this  full  development  of  the  nomadic  state  we  have  throughout  these  pages 
been  recognising  perhaps  the  best  possible  conditions  for  the  breeding  of  hardy 
serviceable  horses.      What  Virgil  says  of  rumour, 

"  !Mobilitate  viget,  viresque  acquirit  eundo," 

is  equally  true  of  young  horse-stock.  In  India,  we  have  seen  colts  which  if  kept 
at  home  would  never  have  proved  worth  their  corn,  take  a  start  and  grow,  on 
a  six-months'  march  befalling  them.  Nay,  the  same  is  true  of  men.  When 
a  campaign  begins,  the  generals  and  senior  staff-officers  come  out  of  the  trans- 
ports so  broken  down  from  sedentary  work  and  over-living  that  a  speedy  re- 
treat to  Club-land  is  predicted  for  many  of  them.  But  the  return  to  natural 
habits,  with  restriction  more  or  less  to  commissariat  rations,  relieves  the  old  fellows 
of  their  gouts  and  plethoras,  renews  their  youth,  and  makes  them  weather-proof. 
The  trait  next  to  be  referred  to  in  the  Bedouin,  as  affecting  their  breeds  of  horses, 
is  their  illiterate  state.  It  is  not  only  that  the  Arabian  nomad  cannot  read  or 
write  or  cipher,  but  that  he  prides  himself  on  it.  He  makes  it  his  boast  that 
he  takes  in  his  knowledge  either  from  the  lips  of  the  experienced  or  through 
his  five  senses  ;  and  that  he  keeps  it  after  he  has  got  it,  not  in  book-stores,  but 
at  his  fingers'  ends.^  This  partly  belongs  to  the  phase  of  civilisation  which  is 
inseparable  from  his  nomadic  state.      His  is  still  the  level  which  our  countrymen 


^  Thus  an  Arab  poet : — 
Stick  you  to   memory,   instead  of  collecting  [l<no\vledge]   in 

books ; 
And  truly  as  regards  books,  mishaps  make  away  with  them : 


The  water  drowns  them  ;  and  the  fire  burns  them  ; 
And  the  thief  [in  Eur.  read  bomwerl  walks  off  with  them  ;  and 
the  mouse  makes  holes  in  them. 


CHAP.   III. 


OF   THE  BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS. 


occupied  in  the  days  of  "  Bell  the  Cat."      Not  a  great  many  hundred  years  before 
the  time  of  that  Bishop  Gawain,   who 

"  Gave  rude  Scotland  Virgil's  page,"  i 

it  had  occurred  in  Arabia,  when  the  Kur-an  was  coming  out  by  little  and 
little,  that  the  Medina  Jews,  many  of  whom  were  bookmen,  brought  their  sacred 
writings,  and  pointed  out  to  the  uprising  Prophet  that  his  stories  of  the  patriarchs 
differed  from  those  in  their  possession  ;  to  which  Muhammad  answered,  that  though 
they  had  the  books,  they  were  "  as  asses  laden  with  them,"  and  "  understood 
not  their  contents."  ^  This  was  too  good  a  thing  to  die  :  one  of  those  long 
thoughts  compressed  in  short  clauses  which  the  Arabs,  with  all  their  power  of 
piling  words  atop  of  words,  so  excel  in  producing.  It  has  become  an  Eastern 
proverb.  Sa' -  di,  the  Persian,  when  his  day  came,  beat  out  the  nugget  into  a 
quatrain  as  follows  : — 

Nor  sage  nor  critic  grows  tlie  insensate  hack 

With  load  of  literature  upon  his  back  : 

What  wots  poor  stupid  if  his  loins  are  sore 

With  food  for  furnaces,  or  lettered  lore  !  ^ 

And  so  the  ball  has  rolled  ;  and  missile  after  missile  for  use  against  book- 
learning  has  been  manufactured  out  of  it.  A  Kurdish  KocJiar  of  Sin-jar  whose 
hospitality  we  lately  experienced — a  nomadic  Dandie  Dinmont  and  patriarch,  rich 
beyond  description  in  flocks  of  sheep  and  Angora  goats  ^ — apropos  of  his  own  and  all 
his  progeny's  innocence  of  their  letters,  sarcastically  said,  "A  man  rubs  a  pointed 
reed  on  a  bit  of  paper,  and  in  a  moment  produces  that  which  may  prove  his 
ruin;" — words,  it  struck  us,  not  without  their  import  for  England  under  the  modern 
postal  system,  with  its  half-a-dozen  deliveries  daily !  Another  reason  for  the  Arabian 
Bedouin's  hatred  of  pen-work  is  his  identifying  it  with  townsmen.  If  the  seden- 
tary Arabs  look  on  their  wandering  kindred  as  Londoners  did  a  century  ago  on 
Taffies,  the  Bad-u,  we  have  seen,  despises  the  Ha-dha-ri  as  the  author  of  the  Nodes 


^  Scott,  in  Mariiiion. 

-  In  a  recent  book  of  Eastern  travel,  a  copious 
bibliography  of  a  certain  subject  is  given  in  a  foot- 
note ;  while  in  the  text  the  talented  author  affords 
proof  of  his  not  having  read  the  literature  which  is 
cited  by  him  1 
^  Similarly  Pope  : — 

"The  bookful  blockhead  ignorantly  read. 
With  loads  of  learned  lumber  in  his  head." 

— Essay  on  Cyiiicism. 
A  little  further  on  is  the  line — 

"  Most  authors  steal  their  works  or  buy." 
Query  :  did  Pope  steal  from  Sa'-di  ? 

■*  Nothing  can  surpass  the  beauty  of  these  creatures 
in  their  own  proper  pastures.     "Quality"  shines  in 


every  feature  :  their  silky  hair,  at  least  eight  inches 
long,  when  the  morning  mists  have  passed  through  it, 
is  pearl)'  white.  Under  the  happy  Eastern  system  of 
the  ?iod^  foUo%uing  the  shepherd,  one  or  two  Kurds 
can  manoeuvre  an  ariny  of  sheep.  The  duty  of  the 
canine  helpers — not  unlike  rough  Great  St  Bernards — 
is  chiefly  watch  and  ward  against  human  and  four- 
footed  robbers.  The  name  for  the  Angora  goat  is 
mir-i's,  which  is  explained  in  Arabic  dictionaries  as 
fh(;  do^vn  beneath  the  hat?-  of  a  goat.  A  flock  was  once 
obtained  from  Mosul  for  export  to  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  ;  but  the  change  from  the  chalky  altitudes  of 
Sin-jar  to  the  alluviuin  of  Babylonia  killed  most  of 
them. 


134 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE   ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


did  a  Cockney.  For  one  thing,  he  is  incHned  to  question  how  far  one  Hving 
in  a  town,  with  all  the  women  going  where  they  list  draped  from  head  to  foot 
like  sheeted  spectres,  Eastern  manners  being  what  they  are,  can  have  any 
certainty  \v\\o  his  father  was.  The  view  which  is  held  by  him,  in  common  with 
Turk-u-ma-ni,  Kurd-i,  and  other  tribal  populations,  of  the  absurdity  of  veiling  honest 
women,  is  infinitely  older  in  the  countries  bordering  on  his  deserts  than  that  which 
is  now  too  much  identified  with  Islamism.^  In  the  story  in  Genesis  (xxxviii.)  of 
Judah's  affair  with  Tamar,  Ave  read  that  when  Judah  saw  her  seated  in  a  gate- 
way on  a  certain  festival  occasion  connected  with  sheep-shearing,  he  "  thought 
her  to  be  an  harlot,"  because  "  she  had  covered  her  face."  And  so  to  this  day 
think  the  Bedouin  ;  who  even  allow  their  daughters  to  look  about  them  and 
choose,  if  they  can  manage  it,  husbands ;  instead  of  settling  them,  as  is  done  in 
several  Eastern  countries,  almost  as  soon  as  they  can  be  taken  from  the  mother. 
Next  in  the  list  of  indictments  brought  by  the  Bedouin  against  townsmen,  is  the 
shame  and  reproach  of  living  under  the  heels  of  Pashas.  Then  come  all  their 
effeminacies,  and  the  infinity  of  superfluous  things  which  they  accumulate, — for  the 
desert  standard  of  comfort  mounts  but  little  higher  than  that  of  Scott's  Highland 
chief,  who,  when  he  saw  his  son  pillowing  his  head  on  a  snowball,  pushed  it  away 
with  the  reproof  that  he  should  be  above  such  luxuries  !  A  last  century  traveller, 
in  reference  to  the  "garb  of  old  Gaul,"  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  "loose  clothes 
do  make  loose  morals."  If  it  be  so,  which  we  question,  then  the  Bedouin  are  the 
least  strait-laced  of  mankind.  Desert  full-dress  for  man  and  woman  is  little  better 
than  nakedness  :  the  condition  of  a  whole  tribe  may  resemble  that  of  Christopher 
Sly, — "  no  more  doublets  than  backs ;  no  more  stockings  than  legs  "  (seldom  even 
that) ;  "  and  no  more  shoes  than  feet."  The  Bad-u  who  is  starting  on  a  journey 
will  load  his  beast  with  coffee-making  utensils,  including  perhaps  a  heavy  mortar  ; 
but  however  handsomely  he  may,  if  a  Shekh,  dress  and  arm  himself,  he  carries 
little  clothing  beyond  what  is  on  his  person.  At  all  these  points  there  shows 
itself  not  merely  his  natural  bareness,  but  his  pride  in  being  what  he  is — the  opposite 
of  a  townsman.      In  so  far  as  Islamism  is  Arabism,  it  develops  simplicity  of  manners. 


1  We  know  from  Jerome  (4th  cent.)  and  other 
sources  that  in  very  early  times  Arab  townswomen 
concealed  their  faces  from  strangers.  Hinduism  fore- 
stalled Islamism  in  this  respect  in  India  ;  where,  as 
in  Persia,  the  custom  is  deeply  seated  in  the  national 
manners.  But  Al  Kur-an  goes  no  further  than  in  the 
following  passage  :  And  say  to  believing  ivomcn  that 
they  abridge  some%ohat  of  their  look  [perhaps,  restrain 
their  vieiu  from  forbidden  objects'] :  and  keep  in  honour 
(or  inviolate)  those  regions  where  the  body  parts :  and 
display  not  their  charms  except  such  as  show  natu- 


rally :  and  draw  their  coverings  over  their  bosoms. — 
[S.  xxiv.]  And  so  on  through  numerous  details.  In 
towns  hke  Baghdad  respectable  women  of  all  creeds, 
and  all  classes  above  the  agricultural,  when  they  go 
out  muffle  themselves  like  mummies.  Only  one  ej'e  is 
allowed  a  peep-hole  ;  and  the  power  of  all  the  other 
features  comes  to  be  concentrated  in  it. 
Sa'-di  says — 

Under  a  covering,  many  a  form  charms  ; 

Take  off  the  wrapper,  and  behold  a  grandmother  ! 


CHAP.  in. 


OF   THE  BEDOUIN  AS   HORSE-BREEDERS. 


I3S 


How  conspicuously  absent  was  the  "pride  of  life,"  as  represented  by  pretentious 
buildings,  in  the  Prophet's  own  household,  has  been  elsewhere  noticed.^  In  his 
highest  estate  Muhammad  was  still  the  Arab  ;  contented  with  the  fare  of  the  desert ; 
ready  to  patch  his  own  cloak,  milk  his  goats,  and  take  bite  and  sup  with  the  poorest.^ 
For  1300  years,  superfluity  and  ostentation  have  been  checked  in  Arabia  proper  by 
his  single  '  Saying  ' :  Verily  he  zuho  eats  or  drinks  from  a  vessel  of  gold  or  silver,  as  it 
zoere  gtUps  down  into  Jus  belly  the  fire  of  Hell.  Commentators  say  that  this  was 
uttered  lest  the  poor  should  be  moved  by  the  sight  of  such  things  to  reproach  God 
with  having  given  more  to  others  than  to  them.  Probably  it  formed  but  an  expres- 
sion of  the  primitive  Arab  nature.  But  to  continue  our  reference  to  the  modern 
Ba-da-wi.  i\  vein  of  rhetoric  and  poetry  distinguishes  him  ;  and  he  is  as  noted 
for  the  beauty  of  his  diction  as  for  the  purity  of  his  blood.  The  very  ancient  prac- 
tice among  the  Bedouin  of  reciting  verses  when  they  assemble  outside  the  tents  in 
the  cool  of  early  night,  while  it  improves  the  memory,  increases  the  natural  flow 
of  language.  The  minstrel  l)'re  of  Najd  has  slept,  or  given  out  but  echoes,  these 
thousand  years  and  more ;  but  the  old  poetry  is  thus  kept  alive.  The  first 
important  series  of  effusions  ever  committed  in  prose  to  the  Arabic  language  was 
the  Kur-an  ;  many  of  the  most  notable  passages  of  which,  though  not  metrical, 
exhibit  the  prevalent  rhythmic  form  of  that  period.-^  When  portions  of  it  began 
to  be  publicly  repeated,  like  Herodotus'  history  at  the  Olympic  games,  the  Bedouin 
said  that  they  were  merely  Muhammad's  poems."*     But  even  that  view  of  the  work 


'    K  p.  115  in  f.n.  3. 

-  The  'Saying'  I-d/id du-i'-fiimf  as-ta-ji-bu,  mean- 
ing, When  ye  are  invited,  then  accept,  may  not  be  in  the 
standard  collections — an  unindexed  mass — but  all  ad- 
mit it ;  the  more  so  that  the  Prophet's  own  example, 
and  that  of  his  immediate  descendants,  illustrated  it. 
Whether  it  apply  to  invitations  recei\'ed  from  Euro- 
peans is  a  different  question.  In  old-fashioned  Muslim 
cities  guests  are  bidden  only  a  day  or  two  before  the 
feast;  and  an  answer  is  not  required.  To  come  is 
a  religious  duty ;  and  they  ^^'ho  cannot  come  send 
apologies. 

^  The  native  majesty  of  the  Kur-an  appears  but 
slightly,  if  at  all,  in  translation.  But  the  following 
rendering  of  Su-ra-tu  'L  Fa-ti-HA,  by  the  late  Sir  R. 
Burton,  may  ser\'e  for  illustration  of  how  the  Arabian 
preacher,  in  striking  out  for  himself  a  prose  style, 
tended,  whatever  his  theme  might  be,  to  bring  in 
■words  with  the  same  termination  : — 

"  /«  the  name  of  Allah,  the  Merciful,  the  Compassionate  ! 

Praise  be  to  Allah,   Who  the  worlds  has  made. 

T/ie  Merciful,  the  Compassionate, 

The  King  of  the  day  of  Fate. 

Thee  do  we  worship ;  and  of  Thee  do  we  ask  aid.- 


Guide  7is  to  the  path  that  is  straight — 

The  path  of  those  to  whom  Thy  love  is  great. 

Not  those  on  whom  is  hate, 

Nor  they  that  deviate. " 

— S.  i. 
*  Some  would  connect  this  fact  with  iVIuhammad's 
proscription  of  the  poets.  But  considering  that 
painting  and  statuary  equally  fell  under  his  ban, 
perhaps  Avhat  mo^•ed  him  was  that  excess  of  puri- 
tanism  which  so  frequently  accompanies  extreme 
earnestness  ;  witness  the  same  view  of  verse-making 
as  "an  art  as  trifling  as  it  is  profane"  put  into  the 
mouth  of  Balfour  of  Burley  in  Old  Mortality.  In  a 
'  Saying '  mentioning  by  name  a  Najdian  lyrist  with 
whose  verses  Arabia  rang  at  the  epoch  of  the  Prophet's 
birth,  in  one  clause  he  is  called  the  leader  of  the  poets ; 
and  in  the  next  it  is  added  that  he  led  them  to  eternal 
fir-e.  Gabriel  said.  And  lue  have  not  taught  him 
[Muhammad]  the  poetic  art :  and  it  is  not  meet  for 
him.  —  S.  xxxvi.  And  again  :  And  the  poets;  they 
who  err  do  follow  them :  dost  thou  not  see  ?  Verily 
they  stray  in  every  valley :  and  verily  they  narrate 
that  which  they  have  not  done:  except  those  of  them 
■who  believe,  do  good  ivorks,  and  keep  God  jniich  before 
them. — S.  xxvi. 


1^6 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


failed  to  recommend  it  to  the  lovers  of  Im-ru  '1  Kais  and  A'n-ta-ra.  At  this  day 
no  genuine  Bad-u  quotes  it.  We  have  never  seen  a  Kur-an  in  the  desert;  or 
indeed  a  scrap  of  writing  of  any  kind,  except  in  the  amulets  ^  which  are  worn 
as  a  defence  against  the  evil  eye,  and  in  the  box  of  the  mulla,  or  "  poor  scholar," 
who  is  kept  to  perform  marriages,  and  read,  if  not  answer,  demands  for  tribute, 
or  for  the  restitution  of  "  lifted  "  sheep. 

With  the  above  facts  before  him,  the  reader  will  know  how  to  estimate  at  their 
proper  value  the  stories  which  are  current  regarding  written  pedigrees  of  Arab 
horses.  There  is  absolutely  nothing  of  the  kind  in  existence.  The  last  time 
that  we  were  in  Paris,  a  fellow-countryman  high  in  office  showed  us  a  paper 
which  he  had  received  with  a  colt  from  Cairo.  He  thought  that  it  proved  his 
favourite  to  have  descended  from  Solomon's  mares  ;  but  it  was  merely  a  charm  which 
a  groom  had  hung  round  the  animal's  neck  to  keep  off  the  evil  eye !  The  simple 
truth  is  this.  In  sales  made  inside  a  town  not  the  most  credulous  would  attach 
weight  to  anything  stated,  whether  orally  or  in  writing,  about  a  horse's  pedigree. 
The  seller  seldom  knows  much  about  it ;  and  if  he  did,  he  would  probably  prefer 
to  exercise  his  imagination,  supposing  that  any  one  was  fool  enough  to  ask  him. 
Just  as  little,  though  for  a  different  reason,  is  it  usual,  when  the  Bedouin  buy  from 
one  another,  to  put  on  paper  what  has  never  been  written  before,  and  could  be  sworn 
to  in  one  forenoon  by  hundreds.  But  when  a  townsman,  or  perhaps  a  European 
Government,  sends  an  agent  to  buy  horses  from  the  tribes  of  Najd  or  Sha-mi-ya, 
nothing  is  commoner  than  to  take  a  voucher  as  to  pedigree  with  every  purchase.- 
Opposite  is  a  facsimile  and  translation  of  such  a  paper,  dabbed  with  the  seals,  or 
thumbs,  of  a  round  dozen  Shekhs  of  the  Su-wai-li-mat,  which  we  once  received 
with  a  colt.  At  the  time  we  thought  it  worth  less  than  the  paper  which  it 
covered.  The  colt  mentioned  in  it  proved  little  better  than  a  ji^a-^?!^  Either  the 
precious  document  was  a  town-made  forgery,  or  some  muUa  had  manufactured  it 
in  the  tents  of  the  Ae-ni-za,  to  jaromote  the  pious  enterprise  of  imposing  upon 
a  European.      An  honest  agent  does  not  need   such  trumpery  ;  scribes  and  seals 


1  Foi-  a  In-jdb,  literally  preve7itive,  consisting  of 
hieroglyphics  traced  on  a  scrap  of  paper  by  any 
chance  visitor  having  the  mysterious  art  of  writing, 
the  Arab  nomad  will  pay  money  or  money's  worth  ; 
which  is  more  than  he  will  do  for  an  honest  purge,  an 
eye-wash,  or  a  pinch  of  quinine — though  these  also, 
w-hen  to  be  had  for  nothing,  he  will  take  gladly.  But 
on  the  whole  it  is  surprising  how  little  of  the  super- 
natural mixes  with  Bedouin  ignorance.  Once  it  befell 
us  to  be  grounded  for  three  midsummer  days  in  a 
little  steamer  on  the  Tigris.  The  tribesmen  of  the 
vicinity  declared  that  it  was  the  Jinn  who  stopped  us  ; 


but  a  Bad-u  who  happened  to  be  passing  rebuked  them 
for  believing"  such  nonsense. 

-  A  Persian,  or  perhaps  Turk-u-man,  name  for  the 
large  coarse  galloways  used  in  mountainous  parts. 
Like  the  Indian  fat-tu,  the  ya-bu  is  mostly  of  nonde- 
script race.  Yet  there  are  b?-eeds  of  yd-biis  too.  One 
breed  in  particular,  called  from  its  curly  hair  the 
Jiabashi  or  African,  which  is  common  in  the  Candahar 
province,  though  seldom  above  14  hands,  comes  near- 
est in  breadth  to  the  European  cart  -  horse  of  any 
Eastern  variety.  One  does  not  sttyd-bih  in  Arabia, 
e.xcept  in  towns  and  on  lines  of  communication. 


FACSIMILE    OF    A    "HUJ-JA" 

(OR    ARAB    CERTIFICATE    OF    A    HORSE). 


rt^-^        .^l^-^&rr  ^^-^.^^rr-'  ^^U^..^-  -^)rK^^ 


«&-v 


Translation. 
This  is  to  record  : 

We  whose  signatures  and  seals  are  below,  Shekhs  of  the  Su-wai  li-mat,  a  branch  of  the  Ae-niza,  do 
testify,  by  Allah,  and  by  Muhammad  son  of  Abdu  '11a,  truly,  without  compulsion,  in  respect  to  the  horse 
of  Ma'-a-shi  '1  Hash-sha-i  of  the  Su-wai-li-mat :  and  he  a  bay,  with  a  mark  like  the  new  moon  on  his 
forehead ;  by  our  stars  and  fortune,  his  dam  was  [of  the  strain]  Wad-na  Khir-san ;  and  his  sire,  Ku-hai-lan 
Abtt  ju-nilb — the  well-known  strain.  He  is  a  horse  used  as  a  sire.  It  is  also  known  to  us  that  his  price 
has  stood  Khidhr,  the  Agel,  in  550  gM-z'ts  [about  ;^88  sterling].  According  to  our  knowledge  and 
information  we  have  written  this  certificate. 


CHAr.  III.  OF   THE   BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS.  137 

and  oaths  by  Allah  are  never  wanting  to  bolster  up  fraud  and  falsehood.  T/ie 
7mfaithful  one  is  fearful^  {e.g.,  always  casting  about  for  papers  to  support  his 
falsehoods),  says  an  Arab  proverb. 

Room  must  now  be  made  for  a  remark  or  two  on  what  is,  after  all,  the  cardinal 
feature  in  the  Bedouin's  practice  of  horse-breeding — the  source  at  once  of  his 
strength  and  weakness — his  unbounded  faith  in  purity  of  blood.  A  large  class  of 
our  countrymen,  it  is  said,  never  see  a  sunny  day  without  wanting  to  go  out  and 
shoot  something.  And  the  sight  of  a  fine  horse  or  mare  seems  naturally  to 
suggest  to  many  other  good  people  the  idea  of  crossing  it  with  one  of  a  different 
variety.  Once  in  India  we  saw  an  Arab  brought  up  to  be  admired  at  a  regimental 
mess ;  when,  because  of  his  having  won  races  in  company  of  his  own  class,  the 
general  vote  was  that  he  ought  to  be  sent  to  England  and  put  to  thoroughbred  mares. 
As  is  nearly  always  the  case  with  Arabs  in  India,  no  one  knew  how  he  was  bred  ; 
and  in  point  of  quality  he  looked  about  fit  to  carry  the  luggage  of  one  of  the  fathers 
of  the  English  stud-book.  If  the  portraits  of  Blair  Athol  and  Alice  Hawthorn  on 
the  wall  behind  us  had  come  down  with  a  run  at  the  mention  of  such  a  commoner 
being  admitted  into  their  truly  patrician  family,  there  would  have  been  little 
wonder.  It  is  not  disputed  that  there  is  a  time  to  cross  ;  but  there  is  also  a  time 
to  cry  enough.  A  "  happy  nick  "  may  greatly  help  to  originate  a  breed  ;  but  it  is 
pure  breeding,  aided  by  the  selection  of  the  fittest,  that  brings  it  to  full  flower.  On 
the  one  hand,  we  know  how  successfully  the  racing  greyhound  was  improved 
through  a  bull-dog  cross,  at  the  end  of  last  century,  by  Lord  Orford.  On  the 
other,  the  results  are  before  us  of  Booth  and  Bakewell's  triumphs  with  short- 
horn cattle  and  Leicester  sheep  respectively,  while  strictly  following  the  system 
of  close  or  "in"  breeding.  But  with  reference  to  "crossing,"  we  must  remem- 
ber what  a  high  degree  of  education,  study,  and  experience  is  here  essential. 
Darwin  says — and  who  more  competent  to  give  an  opinion  ? — that  not  one  man 
in  a  thousand  has  accuracy  of  eye  and  judgment  sufficient  to  become  an  eminent 
breeder ;  and  that  the  extent  of  natural  capacity,  with  years  of  practice  added, 
which  it  takes  to  make  even  a  skilful  pigeon-fancier  is  such  as  few  realise.  This 
being  so,  what  better  line  could  the  Bad-u  have  followed  than  that  of  holding 
on  to  a  good  thing  when  he  had  it — that  is,  on  obtaining  strains  of  horses  equal 
to  every  service,  keeping  the  blood  as  pure  as  possible  ?  And  thus,  if  he  had 
been  a  philosopher,  he  could  not  better  have  avoided  the  rock  which  proves 
so  fatal,  of  trying  suddenly  to  improve  a  breed  without  considering  whether 
the  climate  will  favour  the  altered  produce,  and  the  quantity  and  quality  of 
the  available  food  will  prove  suitable  and  sufficient  for  it.     So  far  nothing  could 

^  "^/  kha-in  klui-if '' — Scottice,  li  is  the  ill  doers  aj-e  ill  dreaders. 

S 


138 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


be  better.  The  fly  in  the  pot  of  honey  is — such  a  fanatic  about  blood  is  every 
desert  breeder,  that,  in  pairing  his  horses,  he  does  not  pay  sufficient  attention  to 
form.  Ask  an  Ae-ni-za  Shelch  whether  one  of  liis  colts  or  fillies  is  a-sil,  and  if  he 
would  maintain  it,  he  will  say.  By  Allah,  yoii  may  breed  from  it  in  a  dark  night  I 
Practically,  this  means — never  mind  whether  the  individual  is  shaped  like  a  race- 
horse, a  donkey,  or  a  buffalo,  so  sovereign  is  the  blood,  that  you  may  safely  use  it 
without  bestowinof  a  thouo^ht  on  anv  external  feature !  The  mischievous  effect  of 
this  purblindness  on  the  horse-stock  of  Arabia — how,  in  consequence  of  it,  faults  of 
conformation  spread  like  weeds  in  a  neglected  garden  —  will  often  appear  in  the 
sequel.  But,  on  the  whole,  the  Bedouin  should  be  thankful  that  such  lights  as  they 
possess  have  dawned  on  them.  It  was  only  right  for  Englishmen,  with  colleges 
of  learned  veterinarians  and  book -writers  at  their  back,  when  the  "  wisest  fool 
in  Christendom "  was  pressing  his  Markham  Arabian  ^  on  them,  to  ponder  well 
the  lines  of  a  clerical  satirist  of  the  period, — 

"  Dost  thou  prize 
Thy  brute  beasts'  worth  by  their  dams'  qualities  ? 
Say'st  thou  thy  colt  shall  prove  a  swift-paced  steed 
Only  because  a  jennet  did  him  breed  ? 
Or  say'st  thou  this  same  horse  shall  win  the  prize 
Because  his  dam  was  swiftest  Trenchefice  ?  "  - 

But  it  would  fare  ill   with    Najdian   horse  -  breeders  if,    in  their  present  primitive 
condition,  they  were  to  throw  away  or  qualify  their  traditional  faith  in  blood. 

An  important  topic  still  remains  :  the  desert  Arab's  horsemanship. 

The  horseman  makes  the  horse  has  several  times  been  stated  as  one  of 
the  central  ideas  in  our  volume.  How  certain  characteristic  qualities  of  the 
Arabian  breed  come  to  it  by  a  kind  of  natural  percolation  from  its  human  culti- 
vators  is  gradually   being  illustrated.       Meanwhile,  Bedouin   equitation  will   repay 


^  The  purchase  by  James  I.  in  1616  for  ^154  from 
a  merchant  named  Markham  of  an  Arabian  stallion 
belonged  to  the  shrewder  side  of  his  character.  The 
foreign  animal,  it  so  befell,  tended  more  to  discredit 
than  bring  into  favour  the  Arab  cross.  The  Admiral 
Rous  of  the  period,  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  did  his 
utmost  to  suppress  him,  describing  him  as  "a  little 
bony  horse  of  ordinary  shape."  Though  his  importers 
and  others  may  have  reckoned  him  an  Arab,  it  by  no 
means  follows  that  he  was  one.  The  same  uncertainty 
equally  belonged,  as  has  often  been  pointed  out,  to 
two  of  his  three  principal  successors,  the  Byerly  Turk, 
the  Darley  Arabian,  and  the  Godolphin  Barb,  who 
were  destined  a  century  later  to  divide  among  them 
the  paternity  of  all  the  thoroughbreds  of  England, 
Europe,  Australia,  the  Cape  Settlements,  and  America. 


The  Darley  Arabian,  as  we  have  elsewhere  stated 
and  intend  further  to  illustrate,  was  a  genuine 
one.  But  of  the  other  two — one  was  merely  a  charger 
brought  from  Turkey  by  one  of  "  Dutch  William's  " 
captains  ;  while  of  the  early  history  of  The  Barb,  all 
that  is  current  is,  the  story  of  his  having  left  the  shafts 
of  a  cart  in  Paris,  in  or  about  1729,  to  become  the 
sire  of  Lath  ;  and  through  him  of  an  illustrious 
progeny,  culminating  in  our  time  in  the  Melbourne 
family. 

-  These  lines,  quoted  during  two  centuries  in  books 
on  racing,  were  first  seen  in  Bishop  Hall's  imitation 
of  the  passage  in  Juvenal's  Sth  satire,  in  ■v\'hich  the 
high-bred  horse  without  spirit  or  courage  is  used  to 
illustrate  that  performance,  and  not  pedigree,  makes 
the  man. 


CHAP.  III. 


OF   THE  BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS. 


139 


separate  notice.  First,  it  should  be  remembered  how  slight  and  lithesome  these 
riders  are.  Heavy  marching  order  is  unknown  among  them  ;  the  infantry  of  match- 
lockmen,  with  its  jingling  belts  and  ammunition,  disposes  itself,  as  has  been  seen, 
on  camels  :  in  a  troop  of  desert  prickers,  but  few  horsemen  would  draw  nine  stone. 
The  importance  of  this  was  impressed  on  us  early  in  life,  while  hog-hunting  with 
certain  native  officers  of  the  Nizam's  Cavalry  in  India.  Not  only  were  our  com- 
panions light  weights  and  fine  horsemen,  but  they  were  rich  enough  to  mount 
themselves,  regardless  of  price,  on  Arabs  powerful  enough  to  carry  two  of  them. 
In  pressing  the  grim  grey  boar  through  one  most  break-neck  Deccan  gully  in  par- 
ticular, what  saved  them  was,  that  their  horses  galloped  with  perfect  freedom.  How- 
ever much  action  may  primarily  be  dependent  on  conformation,  the  paces  of  a 
horse  accustomed  to  carry  a  heavy  man  soon  lose  their  natural  sprightliness. 

There  is  very  little  of  science  in  the  desert  horsemanship.  The  riding-school 
theory  of  suppling  a  colt's  neck  and  haunches,  and  so  uniting  his  powers  in  the 
middle  of  his  body  as  to  lighten  the  two  extremities,  and  put  them  properly  at  the 
disposal  of  the  rider,  would  sound  mere  town  talk  to  the  Bad-u.  It  has  never  struck 
him  that  his  horse's  natural  mode  of  progression  requires  to  be  improved.  Carried 
he  is,  but  he  can  scarcely  be  said  to  ride — at  any  rate,  at  the  slower  paces.  When 
anything  is  on  hand,  he  makes  sail  with  all  his  canvas  out  in  this  fashion — 


,!*,»ii!si. 


■;  C- 


A  L.\  Bedouin. 


Loose  as  his  seat  seems,  he  can  hold  with  his  leg-grip  a  reserve  spear  between  his 
thigh  and  the  saddle.  When  his  mood  is  passive  a  walk  contents  him — his  mare 
all  of  a  sprawl  under  him,  blundering  along  anyhow,  and  looking  from  side  to 
side  ;  with  the  head  and  neck  perfectly  free  and  unsupported.  Once  an  Osmanli 
general,  after  an  expedition  against  the  Sham-mar,  reported  with  military  brevity 
that  the  "  men  had  no  religion  ;  the  women  no  drawers  ;  and  the  horses  no 
bridles."      Not    to    Sfo    back    to    religion,    the    other    two    counts    are    still    true. 


I40 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


Gladly  as  the  Bad-u  will  pull  on  a  pair  of  short  breeches  before  mounting  for 
a  serious  excursion,  on  other  occasions  he  holds  it  but  a  town  fashion  to  part 
the  two  shanks  by  stuffing  them  into  separate  bags  or  cases.  A  girdle  of  leather 
thongs,  called  sabta,  is  laced  round  the  naked  loins,  to  support  the  back  :  and  over 
this  falls  the  only  garment,  the  ka-mts,  or  tkattb,  of  calico — a  decent  smock  :  the 
sleeves  long  and  wide,  with  bird's-wing-like  endings  handy  for  many  uses ;  the  body 
reaching  to  the  heels.  This  is  not  the  drapery  in  which  "  to  turn  and  wind  a  fiery 
Peo-asus."  The  inconvenience  of  it,  and  the  absence  of  stirrups,  may  have  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  Bad-u's  preference  of  the  arm-chair  pace  of  cantering  to  the 
rougher  motion  of  trotting. 

Next  let  us  speak  of  the  Bedouin  saddlery.      The  following  illustration  exhibits 
the  characteristic  bridle  : 


Riding-Halter,  or  rash-ma  .■  including  (i)  rash-ma  proper,  or  (iron)  nose  chain;   (2)  f-dhdr,  or  head  stall ; 

and  (3)  i-a-san,  the  rope  or  rein. 

The  above  is  simplicity  at  its  highest.     When  the  coast  is  clear,  it  is  considered 
sufficient ;  but  the  Bad-u  carries  a  rusty  iron  at  his  saddle-bow,  and  slips  it  into  his 


CHAP.   III. 


OF   THE  BEDOUIN  AS   HORSE-BREEDERS. 


141 


mare's  mouth   on   occasions   resemblinof  those  which  suo-o-est  to  us  the  tiehtenlno- 
of  the  girths  and  the  shortening  of  the  stirrups. 

The  saddle,  of  which  also  we  here  introduce  a  sketch,  well  suits  the  bridle  : 


Bedouin  Pad  {ma' -ra-ka,  also  inat-ra-ha). 

How,  with  the  above  light  tackle,  the  Bad-u  will  take  his  mare  at  speed  any- 
where, surprises  those  who  are  accustomed  only  to  corn-fed  horses.  The  secret 
is,  that  she  has  been  habituated  to  it  from  foal-hood ;  when,  perhaps,  from  cold 
and  hunger,  her  skin  was  as  fast  on  her  as  the  bark  on  a  tree,  and  her  only 
thought  was  to  submit.  This  Arab  riding-halter  is  useful  anywhere.  The  traveller 
can  feed  or  water  his  horse  without  disturbing  it.  The  rope  or  rein,  usually  of 
camel's  hair,  equally  serves  for  leading  with,  and  for  hobbling  during  the  mid-day 
heat,  either  Australian  or  Bedouin  fashion.  It  can  be  worn  under  a  plain 
English  Pelham  or  snaffle.  We  have  ridden  thousands  of  miles  with  it,  and 
found  it  most  convenient.^     The  Bedouin  saddle  is  not  so   eood.       It  is   a   mere 


^  While  going  to  press,  we  have  been  favoured 
with  the  perusal  of  a  series  of  journals  just  printed, 
but  not  published,  by  General  Lord  Mark  Kerr, 
G.C.B.  No  one  who  has  seen  Lord  IVIark  when  an 
officer  of  the  famous  old  13th  ride  his  own  horse,  or 
a  friend's,  over  obstacles,  needs  to  be  informed  that 
he  was  an  adept  in  the  saddle.  During  the  Delhi 
Manoeuvres  of  1871  he  made  this  entry  :  "He  [Maha- 
rajah of  Vizianagram]  is  astonished  at  my  riding. 
I  had  the  reins  on  one  side  of  my  horse's  neck  only, 
as  I  often  do,  and  find  it  quite  as  easy  as  the  usual 
way,  and  useful,  as  I  often  get  off  and  walk,  and 
thus  have  the  reins  easily  in  my  hand  to  lead  my 
horse."  It  further  appears  in  the  same  record  that 
another  Bedouin  practice,  "  riding  Avithout  stirrups," 
was  natural  to  Lord  Mark ;  and  that  when  a 
"fuss"  was  raised  about  his  doing  so,  in  the  Crimea, 
by  martinet  generals  and  brigadiers,  the  only  con- 
cession which  he  would  make  to  the  military  pro- 
prieties was  that  he  "henceforth  put  the  stirrups  on  to 


the  saddle,  and  crossed  them  over  the  pommel "  ! 

Most  of  us  lose  a  great  deal  as  horsemen  through 
over-dependence  on  stirrups.  Once,  long  ago,  at  Hy- 
derabad in  the  Deccan,  an  Indian  who  was  riding  in 
a  flat  race  for  an  English  patron  found,  about  a  mile 
from  home,  that  his  girth  had  given  way.  Instead  of 
letting  the  saddle  fall,  and  coming  in  short  of  weight, 
he  brought  it  in  with  him  in  his  hand,  gallantly 
winning  the  race.  As  for  bits  and  bitting,  although 
steeplechases  have  been  won  bridleless,  the  necessity 
for  control  and  guidance  of  this  kind  in  the  higher 
parts  of  horsemanship  is  evident.  More  than  a  hun- 
dred varieties  of  bits,  we  believe,  could  be  enumer- 
ated. All  but  a  few  of  them  ought  to  be  sent  out 
of  the  country  for  sale  to  savages.  When  a  horse 
in  daily  work  is  doing  no  more  than  carrying  one, 
or  as  soldiers  say,  marchings  it  is  absurd  to  overload 
his  head  with  saddlery,  every  strap  of  which  is  an 
extra  trouble  both  to  him  and  his  rider  ;  and  to  puzzle 
him   with   ciu'b   bits   and   curb  chains.     A  snaffle  is 


142 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  II. 


make-up  of  felt  or  sacking  stuffed  with  wool  or  cotton;  for  wood,  leather,  and 
iron  are  scarce  in  the  desert.  At  certain  seasons  it  is  never  off  the  mare's 
back  night  or  day,  except  when  she  is  swimming  a  river.  On  such  occasions, 
her  rider  strips  himself  to  the  skin  —  as  just  seen,  an  easy  matter;  ties  all 
his  gear  atop  his  saddle  with  the  su-iimt  or  loin-strings  ;  puts  the  saddle  upon 
his  head ;  and,  rein  in  hand,  descends  into  the  current.  Such  are  the  only 
times  when  we  have  ever  seen  a  lot  of  mares  unsaddled ;  and  then  most  of 
their  backs  were  sore — not,  indeed,  with  the  terrible  galls  which  wood  or  iron 
causes,  but  with  skin  wounds  which  will  heal  under  the  saddle.^  Instead  of 
minding  these,  the  warlike  brotherhood  take  the  Spartan  view  of  them  :  a  desert 
poet,  wishing  to  describe  a  man  of  ideal  fortitude,  likens  him  to  a  camel  tmder 
whose  saddle  many  a  wotmd  has  healed.  A  Bedouin  who,  from  having  no  mare, 
is  forced  to  ride  a  stallion,  hammers  him  with  the  butt  of  his  lance  when 
he  makes  a  noise ;  or  perhaps  carries  hanging  from  his  wrist  a  thing  like  a 
dog -whip  for  his  benefit.  In  his  churlish  thinking,  the  female  is  the  better, 
and  more  patient,  in  all  animals  save  Man  ;  his  gentle  mare  needs  no  other 
admonition  than  a  touch  on  the  side  of  the  neck  with  the  short  stick  called 
mih-jan  (also  viish-db)  which  is  never  out  of  the  nomad's  hand.  Considering  how 
vigorously,  in  times  of  warfare,  the  Bedouin  from  his  first  beginnings  has  plied 
the  naked  heel  against  his  mare's  sides,  what  a  fact  it  would  have  been  for  Science 
if  a  spur  like  a  cock's  had  now  belonged  to  his  anatomy !  but  as  such  is  not  the 
case,  he  is  driven  to  a  device  of  this  kind  : 


Bedouin  Spur  [mih-maz). 


all  that  is  wanted  for  such  simple  riding.  As 
stated  in  the  text,  we  have  usually  found  a  horse  that 
is  accustomed  to  the  Arab  halter  march  better,  at  all 
paces,  when  nothing  is  put  in  his  mouth  to  exclude 
the  fresh  air,  and  keep  him  in  a  state  of  fret  and 
irritation.  If  an  Arab,  he  is  pretty  sure  to  trip  and 
blunder,  but  he  will  not  fall. 

'  The  Arabic  word  for  the  bruising  or  galling  of  a 
beast's  back  is  daus — primary  meaning,  trampling, 
esp.  corn  to  thrash  it.     And  the  same  word  was  once 


-e.g.,  "  douse  the  glim ' 


current  in  the  British  Islands- 
=  put  out  the  lig/it,  in  chap.  iii.  of  Guy  Alanneriftg. 
And  in  "  Blind  Harry's "  History  of  Sir  William 
Wallace : — 

"  Two  supple  fellows  there  that  pressed  him  most, 
He  doused  their  doublets  rarely  to  their  cost." 

Douse  or  douche;  drub  (Semitic  drb) ;  and  many 
other  words  of  the  same  pithy  class,  may  have  been 
carried  our  way  by  the  gipsies. 


CHAP.   III. 


OF   THE  BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS. 


143 


Elsewhere  we  let  an  Abrabian  poet  describe  a  thunderstorm  ;  ^  and  perhaps 
if  we  here  introduce  another  piece  of  the  same  minstrelsy,  and  afterwards  add 
a  few  explanations,  this  view  of  desert  horsemanship  will  be  well  concluded  : — 

And  often  I  am  out  betimes ;  when  the  birds  are  in  their  nests ;  on  a  sleek  hunter ;  a  shackler  of  wild 

animals  : 
One  to  him  are  charge  and  flight ;  advance ;  retreat :  big  as  a  mass  of  rock  which  the  torrent  has  torn 

from  a  height : 
A  dark  bay ;  the  saddle  -  slips  off  the  middle  of  his  back,  as  slides  the  smooth  stone  in  running  water  : 
A  great  bounder,  from  high  condition;^  whose  snorting,  when  he  is  excited,  resembles  in  vehemence  the 

boiling  over  of  a  cauldron  : 
Full  of  running  w-hen  the  gallopers,  dead-beat,  are  pawing  the  dust  in  the  track  of  his  hoof-marks  : 
Unseating  the  light  stripling  from  his  back;  and  tossing  off  the  cloak  of  the  hard-riding  heavy-weight  : 
Swift  as  the  boy's  plaything  which  the  incessant  movement  of  his  hands  sends  flying  round  and  round 

by  the  string  attached  to  it : 
Ribbed  up  like  the  antelope;  with  thighs  like  the  ostrich's;  lobbing  along  like  the  wolf;  galloping  like 

the  fox-cub  : 
Great  of  barrel ;    and  when  you  look  at  him  from  behind,  he  has  closed  his  channel  with  a  tail  falling 

nearly  to  the  ground,  and  inclined  to  neither  side  :  ^ 
His  back  as  he  stands  in  his  place  is  like  the  stone  on  which  perfumes  are  bruised  for  a  bride,  or  the  slab 

on  which  they  pound  colocynth  : 
The  blood  on  his  neck  of  the  leaders  of  the  herd  is  like  the  juice  of  the  Jim-7ia  on  the  trimmed  hair  of  the 

greybeard.^ 
And  there  came  in  sight  a  herd,  containing  heifers,  which  were  like  the  maidens  in  trailing  garments 

that  circle  round  the  sacred  stones  in  the  temple  : " 
And  they  turned  towards  us  rumps  like  the  white  shells  set  here  and  there  in  the  necklace  of  a  boy  who 

has  both  paternal  and  maternal  uncles  :  " 
And  he  laid  us  alongside  of  the  foremost ;  and  behind  him  those  that  had  fallen  to  the  rear,  in  a  lot  not 

broken  up  : 
And  he  passed,  in   his  charge,  from  bull  to  heifer;   running  them  down,  without  sweating  or  turning 

a  hair  : 


^  P.  49,  ante. 

2  Word  used  is  libd,  q.  v.  in  Index  I. 

2  In  the  text  dhabl ;  of  a  tree,  the  drying  up  ;  of  a 
horse,  the  bei7ig  drawn  fine.  It  A\as  impossible  for 
the  Arabs  to  follow  the  chase  mounted  without  dis- 
covering the  importance  of  cojidition:  from  their 
words  for  which  it  is  to  be  concluded  that  the  plan 
of  galloping  in  sweaters  and  afterwards  scraping,  now 
fallen  out  of  date  in  England,  would  ha\-e  mightily 
pleased  them,  if  there  had  been  any  one  to  show  it  to 
them.  The  old  heroes  and  their  riding  cattle,  whether 
camels  or  horses,  are  always  described  in  verse  as 
being  lean  to  meagreness. 

■•  To  this  day  good  judges  of  Arabs  say  that  one 
which  carries  his  tail  askew  in  galloping  is  but  mid- 
dling. 

"  Naturally  this  suggests  that  the  chase  must  have 
been  like  that  of  the  hog  in  India,  in  which  the  hunters 
ply  the  spear  or  sabre  at  close  quarters.  But  a  native 
authority  says  that  it  is  an  allusion  to  an  old  Arab  cus- 


tom of  marking  the  courser's  throat  with  the  blood  of 
the  game  which  has  been  run  down  by  him.  If  so, 
bows  and  arrows  may  have  been  used. 

^  I.e..,  the  Ka'-ba.  Whether  the  circumambulating 
virgins  of  the  old  Mecca  cult  were  devotees  of  the 
Hindu  type  —  daughters  of  song  and  pleasure  —  or 
ritualistic  processionists,  like  those  of  the  Greeks,  or 
mere  successions  of  worshippers,  is  uncertain.  A 
special  costume,  at  least,  seems  identified  with  them 
— white  robes  of  extraordinary  length.  To  this  day 
the  pilgrim,  when  he  approaches  Mecca,  is  bound  to 
exchange  the  garb  in  which  his  sins  have  been  com- 
mitted for  one  or  more  clean  cotton  sheets  through 
which  no  needle  has  passed.  A  very  ancient  people 
sur\dves  in  Babylonia  {v.  Index  I.,  art.  Sa-ba,  f.n.), 
whose  priests,  or  i\Iagi,  wear  a  white  stole,  and  white 
turban,  while  engaged  in  sacred  offices. 

''  I.e.,   who   has   plenty   of  relations   to   give   him 
presents. 


144 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


And  the  bustling  cooks  spent  the  night  in  boihng,  broiUng,  roasting,  stewing  : 

And  we  broke  up ;  and  one's  gLmce  went  near  failing  by  the  side  of  him,  when  the  e}'e  looked  him  all 

over,  up  and  down  : 
And  he  stood  all  night  with  his  saddle  ^  on  him,  and  his  bridle ;  and  he  stood  all  night  in  front  of  me,  not 

turned  out. 

— Im-ru  'l  Kais. 

Three  things,  according  to  the  Eastern  saying,  are  from  God  :  a  good  wife,  a 
good  horse,  and  a  good  sword.  In  the  horse  of  the  foregoing  verses,  one  of 
the  three  is  exhibited.  Horses  in  poems  do  not  always  resemble  those  in  real  life, 
any  more  than  those  in  advertisements  do.  If  any  sanguine  reader  were  to  search 
Arabia  for  a  phcenix  answering  to  Im-ru  '1  Kais'  description,  he  would  probably 
discover  that  such  is  rarely  bestowed  on  any  one  in  this  life ;  while  he  who  has 
one  does  not  sell  him.  But  the  passage  cited  shows  that  nearly  1400  years  ago, 
or  about  the  time  when  the  Romans  were  leaving  the  "abject  Britons,"  as  Hume 
calls  them,  to  manage  their  own  affairs,  the  Najdian  sportsman,  if  he  did  not 
find  him  every  day,  had  some  experience  of  the  stamp  of  horse  which  he  should 
look  for  :  a  strong  craving  galloper ;  fast  enough  to  "  put  shackles  on  " — that  is, 
run  into — the  wild  creatures  of  the  desert ;  as  big  under  one  as  a  house ;  with  a 
great  back  and  loin,  deep  ribs,  the  propulsion  from  behind  of  a  catapult,  and  withal 
perfectly  in  hand.  The  praising  of  a  horse  because  of  his  saddle  slipping  off  him 
sounds  strange  in  European  ears.  But  the  meaning  merely  is,  that  his  back  was 
of  the  "double  spine"  pattern  which  Virgil  also  held  up  to  admiration."  The 
primitive  Arab  saddle,  from  its  softness  and  free  and  easy  girthing,  does  not  sit 
firm.  The  rider's  legs  help  to  keep  it  in  its  place ;  and  one  reason  of  the  Bad-u's 
not  using  stirrups  is  that  he  may  freely  roll  off, — perhaps  with  his  arms  round  his 
mare's  neck — and  be  on  again  in  a  moment.  The  first  time  that  an  Arab  horse 
has  an  English  saddle  properly  girthed  on  him,  he  is  apt  to  lie  down  with  colic 
after  going  a  mile  or  two.  It  is  not  the  hind-legs  alone  that  form  the  "propellers." 
Thighs  '^  like  an  ostrich's,  or  as  we  say  a  game-cock's,   running  into  great  broad 


^  The  word  for  saddle  here  is,  not  libd.,  but  sarj., 
q.  V.  in  Index  I. 

-  "At  duplex  agitur  per  lumbos  spina." 

— Georg.,  lib.  iii.,  line  87. 
A  backbone  along  either  side  of  which,  from  the  ful- 
ness of  the  dorsal  muscles,  two  ridges  run,  having  a 
deep   furrow  between   them,  called   by  the  Arabs   a 
ta-ri-ka,  or  track. 

^  Anatomical  names  and  those  used  by  horsemen  do 
not  in  every  case  coincide.  The  horse's  thigh-bone  is 
concealed  by  the  muscles  of  the  hind-cjuarters  ;  as  his 
humerus,  or  true  arm,  is  by  tliose  of  the  chest.  His 
"thigh"  is  our  "calf":  in  certain  feathered  bipeds, 
"  drum-stick."  His  hock  is  the  human  ankle — having 
the  Achilles  tendon  running  into  the  point  of  it  (ps 
calcis)  or  "  heel " — Man  being  the  only  animal  whose 


heel  rests  on  the  ground.  Similarly,  of  course,  his  knee 
[carpus'),  or  part  that  gets  "broken"  when  he  comes 
down,  answers  to  the  human  wrist.  Above  the  knee 
is  the  long  forearm  (radius  and  scarcely  trace- 
able ulna)  ;  below  the  knee,  the  shank  or  cannon, 
representing  the  middle  bone  of  the  five  meta- 
carpals which  support  our  palm.  In  the  pastern, 
coronary,  and  coffin  bones  of  the  veterinarian,  the 
joints  of  our  middle  finger  are  present.  If  we  Avould 
inquire  about  our  other  digits,  we  must  go  to  the 
anatomist.  A  glance  at  the  hoof  shows  it  to  be 
simply  a  thickened  and  marvellously  adapted  nail. 
The  Arab  horseman  does  not  apply  to  all  fours  his 
word  for  legs.  Only  the  parts  between  the  stifle  and 
the  ground  receive  this  name  from  him  ;  what  we 
call  the  fore-legs  are  with  him  the  hands  or  arms. 


CHAP.   III. 


OF   THE  BEDOUIN  AS  HORSE-BREEDERS. 


1.45 


hocks,  are  not  so  common  that  we  can  afford  to  pass  them  over.  But  the  true- 
made  weight-carrying  runner  always  has  a  good  middle-piece.  Some  think  that  the 
biceps  muscles  of  the  rowers  send  the  racing  boat  through  the  water ;  but  the 
trainer  tells  us  that  without  the  right  sort  of  back,  strength  of  arm  is  wasted.  The 
name  A I  inaj-ina  given  by  Arab  horsemen  to  the  place  where  the  loins  run  into 
the  hind-quarters  contains  the  same  idea  as  our  word  coupling  or  couples. 

The  identification,  scientifically,  of  the  several  wild  animals  which  are  mentioned 
in  the  old  Arabian  poems  requires  more  knowledge  of  zoology  than  we  possess. 
But  evidently,  the  game  afoot  in  Im-ru  '1  Kais'  description  was  a  troop  of  those  ox- 
like  antelopes,  connecting  links  between  the  antelope  and  the  ox  families,  of  which 
the  gnus  of  S.  Africa,  and  the  nyl  ghau,  or  blue  ox,  of  India  are  representatives.^ 
In  the  verses  themselves  the  object  of  the  chase  is  merely  called  a  herd ;  and  the 
word  which  we  have  rendered  heifers  is  applied  by  the  Arabs  to  the  females  of 
numerous  ruminants,  both  wild  and  tame ;  and  figuratively  even  to  women.  Every 
shade  and  detail  of  meaning  would  be  seized  by  the  audience  in  a  moment.  There 
is  nothing  to  show  that  hawks  or  hounds  took  part  in  the  run  ;  but  in  a  contem- 
porary poem — in  which,  by  the  way,  the  object  of  the  chase  receives  no  other  name 
than  the  nntamcd  one — there  is  a  picture  of  how  the  hunters  ^  slipped  a  couple  of 
hounds  with  drop-ears  and  spare  bodies.  One  of  these  was  called  Ka-sib,  or 
Caterer  ;  and  the  other  Su-kham,  or  Soot.  Just  where  the  bard  abruptly  changes 
his  theme,  to  begin  a  rhapsody  about  his  camel,  both  dogs  have  been  struck  dead  by 
the  infuriated  animal's  spear-like  horns. 

Such  is  the  Bedouin  horseman ;  and  such  are  some  of  the  ways  of  the  Arabian 
desert  to  which  we  owe  the  Arabian  horse.  ■ 


'  Such  were  the  male  and  female  wa-dM-ha,  the 
latter  "  resembling  a  little  cow,"  which  Doughty  saw 
in  Amir  Muhammad's  garden  at  Ha-yil  (vol.  i.  p.  592). 
He  calls  the  wa-dht-ha,  Antilope  Beatrix j  and  sug- 
gests (same  vol.,  p.  328)  that  it  may  be  the  rim  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures,  which  is  rendered  in  the  Greek 
version  unicorn.  Of  course  it  was  a  mistake  to  ascribe 
a  single  horn  to  a  double  forehead  ;  and  in  Deut. 
xxxiii.  17,  the  horns,  not  horn,  of  the  rim  are  spoken 
of  Nevertheless  the  identification  of  the  wa-dhi-ha 
with  the  rtfii  \s  doubtful.  Mr  C.  J.  Lyall,  we  notice, 
accounts  the  "  wild  kine "  of  early  Arabian  poetry^ 
Antilope  defassa;  and  the  "deer"  of  the  same  litera- 
ture, Antilope  leucoryx  (Transl.  of  Ancient  Arab. 
Poetry,  p.  117),  A  wild  animal  is  mentioned  seven 
times  under  the  naine  of  rim  in  the  Biblical  books. 
But  in  Arabic  and  Assyrian  literature  also  there  is 
a  rim;  and  unless  the  Hebrew  usage  of  the  name 
differed  from  the  Arabic,  it  is  probable  that  the  rim 
of  the  Bible  and  the  rim  of  Najd  are  identical. 
Many  in  I'r^k  apply  the  names  rim,  gha-zal,  and 
dhab-y  loosely  to  several  different  kinds  of  antelope  ; 


but  both  in  speech  and  literature  we  find  the  cervine 
antelopes,  of  which,  according  to  this  \'iew,  is  the  7'im, 
well  distinguished  from  the  bovine  antelopes,  of  which 
is  the  lua-dhi-ha,  or  buh-fha.     Zu-hair  says  : — 

There  sweep  by,  troop  after  troop,  the  large-eyed  ones,  and 

the  antelopes ; 
And  their  younglings  rise  up  from  every  couching-place : 

in  which  the  large-eyed  ones — I'n  {een) — may  be  the 
wild  kine  J  while  the  name  in  the  second  clause  is 
d-rdm,  pi.  of  rim.  Similarly  La-bid  (600  A.D.)  in  two 
succeeding  lines  seems  first  to  mention  the  cervine, 
and  then  the  bovine,  antelope  : 

(In  a  certain  favourite  spot) — 

The  tops  of  the  wild-rocket  uprise.  In  the  two  sides  of  the 
valley  the  antelopes  [dhab-y']  and  ostriches  breed: 

And  the  large-eyed  ones  that  have  just  brought  forth  lie  in- 
tent on  their  young — their  young  collecting  in  herds  on 
the  plain. 

-  The  word  rendered  hunters  has  a  root  suggestive 
of  archery.  The  hearers  would  know  whether  the 
hunters  were  archers  or  spcar-throwers,  mounted  or 
on  foot. 


146 


CHAPTER    IV. 

HORSE-BREEDING    AMONG    THE    SETTLED    ARABS. 

HERE  again  hard-and-fast  lines  are  to  be  avoided.  In  many  localities  the 
townsman  breeds  from  every  horse  or  mare  to  which  it  has  pleased 
any  one  to  attach  a  pedigree.  In  towns  like  Ha-yil,  coloured  through  and 
through  with  Bedouin  manners,  or  Der,  a  kind  of  house-of-call,  as  seen  above, 
for  the  northern  Ae-ni-za,  the  beliefs  and  prejudices  of  the  desert  in  respect  of 
horse-breeding  are  in  every  mouth.  Partnerships  in  a  mare  between  a  nomad 
and  a  townsman  are  common,  and  form  one  of  the  ways  in  which  Arabia's 
best  blood  continues  itself  outside  of  the  desert.  But,  broadly  speaking,  the 
town  and  village  bred  division  is  more  remarkable  for  diversity  than  quality. 
Little  and  often,  is  how  a  Turkish  Pasha  likes  to  have  his  hand  softened ; 
and  when  no  ducats  offer,  he  will  accept  a  mare  or  a  colt  from  a  candidate 
for  his  favour.  Every  peasant  works  with  mare  cattle ;  and  a  mare  with  foal 
at  foot  costs  no  more  to  keep  than  a  barren  one.  Many  a  great  horse  of  the 
Indian  Turf,  if  we  mistake  not,  has  owed  his  birth  to  a  drudge  whose  shoulders 
were  sore  from  daily  labour.  From  Mosul  to  the  end  of  the  Arab  promontory, 
to  own  a  "  bit  of  blood "  and  breed  from  her,  forms  the  ambition  of  multitudes. 
All  this  keeps  up  a  great  growth  of  horse-breeding.  It  is  the  fashion  with 
many  to  express  a  high  disdain  for  all  horses  which  do  not  come  straight  from 
the  Bedouin ;  but  it  is  possible  to  carry  this  too  far.  We  do  not  dispute  the 
pre-eminence  of  the  pure-bred  desert  horse.  In  his  highest  forms,  he  is  to  his 
half-and-half  relations  what  our  thoroughbred  is  to  hacks  and  carriage  cattle. 
But  nature  never  gives  to  any  breed,  any  more  than  to  any  individual,  the  com- 
bined excellences  or  qualities  of  all.  The  right  saddle  needs  to  be  put  on  the 
right  horse.  It  is  breeding  that  makes  the  Clydesdale  and  the  racer  alike  excel 
in  their  respective  tasks ;  but  the  same  illustration  shows  how  essential  it  is  that 
the  work  and  the  breeding^  should  be  conformable. 


CHAP.    IV. 


HORSE-BREEDING  AMONG    THE   SETTLED   ARABS. 


147 


The  varieties  of  horsemanship  to  be  seen  outside  of  the  desert  are  as  numerous 
as  the  differences  of  class  and  breeding  in  the  liorses.  If  the  settled  Arabs 
broadly  represent  one  stratum,  and  the  wandering-  another,  the  modern  super- 
structure consists  of  the  Osmanli.  For  the  most  part,  these  are  sorry  objects 
on  a  horse.  But  there  are  many  exceptions,  especially  among  soldiers.  We 
know  a  commandant  of  artillery  who  is  at  once  a  finished  horseman  and  a 
highly  artistic  coper.  Colts  of  his  training  would  pass  muster  even  at  Vienna. 
Nor  should  reference  be  omitted  to  countrymen  of  our  own  engaged  in 
commerce  in  towns  like  Baghdad  and  Damascus,  who,  being  light  -  weights 
and  sportsmen,  keep  buying,  or  even  breeding,  colts  and  selling  them. 
A  cavalry  officer  in  India  or  Egypt  who  chances  to  buy  as  a  charger 
one  that  has  passed  through  hands  like  the  above  may  find  himself  to  his 
surprise,  the  first  time  of  mounting,  riding  a  very  well  taught  one.  Tuition 
of  a  different  sort  is  that  of  the  numerous  predatory  hill  -  men,  masters  from 
childhood  of  every  volt  in  Eastern  horsemanship,  who  enrol  themselves,  with  their 
horses,  in  the  mounted  police,  to  ply  their  natural  calling  in  the  Sultan's 
name.  When  sent  hither  and  thither  to  squeeze  the  dues  of  Government 
out  of  reluctant  Arabs,  these  worthies  seldom  fail  to  take  back  as  their 
private  property — often  as  the  price  of  saying  that  they  could  not  find  the 
person  wanted — a  nice  colt  or  filly ;  which,  after  riding  it  for  a  year  or  two, 
they  turn  into  money.  Thus  they  form  great  purvej^ors  for  the  jam-bazes ; 
and  their  duty  takes  them  into  places  over  which  it  would  never  pay  professional 
horse-buyers  to  travel. 

English  and  other  European  saddles,  also  Turkish,  Circassian,  and  ornate 
Persian  ones,  are  used  in  towns  ;  but  the  commoner  road  or  travelling  saddle  of 
the   settled  Arabs  is  more  or  less  like  this — 


Saddle  {sarj)  of  the  Arabs  and  Kurds. 


148  THE  BREEDERS    OF  THE  ARABIAN.  book  ii. 

The  saddle  on  the  preceding  page  was  made  at  Su-lai-ma-ni-ya,  a  Kurdish 
town  of  eastern  I'rak,  which  is  famous  for  articles  of  this  description.  In  some 
respects,  perhaps,  it  has  a  hint  to  offer  to  our  mihtary  saddlers.  The  covering  is  of 
felt,  with  only  a  few  strips  of  leather  added  ;  so  that  it  needs  but  little  cleaning.  It 
rarely  sustains  injury  when  the  horse  lies  down  and  rolls  while  it  is  on  his  back. 
Owing  to  the  wooden  tree  being  so  arched,  the  weight  of  the  heaviest  man  fails  to 
bring  it  down  on  the  spine  and  withers.  It  straightens  the  rider,  and  throws  him 
on  his  fork,  thereby  saving  the  horse's  loins.  The  great  objection  to  it  is  its  weight, 
which  is  about  two  stone.  It  also  too  much  raises  the  rider,  and  puts  him  out  of 
touch  with  his  horse's  frame. 

The  kJmr-jen,  or  wallets,  which  hang  across  the  saddle  of  our  sketch,  were 
made  in  Der.  According  to  an  Arab  saying,  the  horseman's  saddle  -  bags  are 
his  larder. 

The  stirrup  which  hangs  from  the  saddle  of  our  cut  is  of  the  useful,  not  the  or- 
namental, pattern.     They  who  study  appearance  ride  out  in  stirrups  of  this  shape — 


Stirrup  (i-i-kdb)  op  the  Persians,  Kurds,  and  Town-Arabs. 

On  gala  occasions  like  the  zaf-fa,  or  marriage-procession,  these  show  well.  In 
real  riding,  they  render  unnecessary  jointed  stirrups  or  spring-bars  ;  for  the  foot 
cannot  remain  in  them  after  the  seat  is  lost.  Their  sharp  angles  serve  as  spurs. 
Gens  d' amies  in  particular  have  a  way  of  feeling  the  horse's  flank  with  a  stirrup- 
corner  at  every  step.  This  is  said  to  be  what  makes  their  horses  such  un- 
commonly brisk  walkers.  But  the  -  property  of  the  smart  town  stirrup  thus  to 
hurt  a  horse's  sides  accounts  for  its  non  -  appearance  in  the  above  -  sketched 
saddle — our  seat  over  many  an  unmeasured  mile  of  desert — the  gilded  shovels 
proper  to  which  were  exchanged  with  a  muleteer,  much  to  his  surprise  and 
delight,  for  the  dingiest  pair  of  irons  in  his  collection.  Other  advantages  of 
the  quieter  article    are    that    no    one  mistakes   it  for  precious    metal ;    and  when 


CHAP.   IV. 


HORSE-BREEDING  AMONG    THE   SETTLED  ARABS. 


149 


one  p-oes  amono-  the  Bedouin,  it  is  not  so  suafffestive  as  the  other  is  of  the 
rider's  being  a  Beg,  or  official  person.  Arabia  can  have  no  clans  so  back- 
ward as  those  found  by  certain  travellers  on  the  coast  of  Africa  who  refused 
gold  coins,  and  accepted  gilt  anchor  -  buttons,  in  payment  for  their  cattle, 
because  the  buttons  had  eyes,  and  the  guineas  had  not !  But  several  times  we 
have  perceived  a  Bad  -  u  scratching  hard  at  a  Whippy's  stirrup,  to  find  out 
whether  it  was  silver :  and  once,  on  alighting  among  the  Saiga,  a  squalid, 
outlying  sept  of  the  Ae-ni-za,  in  a  military  cloak  with  gilt  buttons,  it  looked 
as  if  we  might  be  followed  and  plundered  for  the  sake  of  what  no  one  doubted 
was  gold !  Speaking  of  this,  we  are  not  unmindful  of  the  objection  to  disguises 
already  stated  :  but  the  professing  to  be  what  one  is  not  ^  is  one  thing,  and 
the  making  of  one's  self  a  gazingstock  is  a  different  thing.  As  far  as  personal 
safety  goes,  in  northern  Arabia,  where  the  danger  of  molesting  a  European 
is  realised,  that  plainest  of  all  advertisements  of  the  Frank,  the  stiff-brimmed 
helmet  —  so  evidently  not  intended  for  prostration  —  forms  the  best  passport 
and  protection.  But  it  has  its  drawbacks  ;  and  it  is  best  for  the  traveller 
as  far  as  possible  to  discard  all  garments  and  articles  of  equipment  which 
too  much  savour  of  Europe.  A  saddle  will  pass,  provided  it  be  Eastern  ; 
or  if  European,  taken  from  a  lumber-room  :  for  the  Bedouin  know  that 
townsmen  cannot  mount  without  a  half-way  foothold.  But  as  for  such 
utensils  as  tubs  and  basins  —  inventions,  by  the  way,  for  enabling  one  to  per- 
form his  ablutions  in  polluted  water — the  view  in  the  desert  is,  that  they  who 
carry  them  have  too  much  money.  Once  on  the  Euphrates,  when  journeying  a  la 
Arabe,  it  befell  us  to  have  every  article  with  us,  except  what  was  on  the  per- 
son, overhauled  by  a  ring  of  Bad-us,  while  we  were  supposed  to  be  asleep. 
First,  the  honest  gelding  munching  his  ration  with  the  end  of  his  rope  in  our 
hand  engaged  them  ;    but  the   secret  of  him   was   soon   talked   out.       Next,    they 


^  The  above  view  apart,  it  is  as  difficult  in  many 
localities  to  keep  European  clothes  in  proper  trim 
as  it  is  to  replace  them  when  they  get  worn  out  or 
stolen.  Thus,  in  travelling  once  from  Baghdad 
through  Persia  to  Muhammara  by  the  extremely 
mountainous  Pusht  i  kuh  route,  we  nowhere  found 
a  smoothing-iron.  He  who  puts  on  a  Bond  Street 
shirt  with  all  its  particularities  hanging  limp,  or  a 
nicely  cut  white  patrol  jacket  wrinkled  and  distorted 
past  recognition  by  Bakht-i-a-ri  washing,  is  apt  to 
think  that  a  suit  of  native  pattern  and  material 
would  be  preferable.  In  the  frontispieces  of  A 
Pilgrimage  to  El  Medina  ajtd  Mecca  (1857  edit.); 
A  Pilgrimage  to  Najd  (1881);  and  Early  Adven- 
tures in  Persia,  Susiana,  and  Babylonia  (1887),  three 


travellers  so  dissimilar  as  Captain  (the  late  Sir)  R. 
Burton,  Lady  A.  Blunt,  and  Sir  H.  Layard  appear 
before  their  readers  in  the  costumes  of  those  with 
whom  they  mixed.  But  of  the  three  it  was  the  first 
alone  who  did  so  with  the  object  of  escaping  identi- 
fication as  a  European  ;  and  small  blame  to  him, 
considering  whei'e  he  went.  The  second  did  it  from 
fancy,  or  convenience  ;  and  Sir  H.  Layard  for  lack 
of  other  garments.  With  all  this,  our  countrymen 
should  remember  that  in  the  East  even  more  than 
in  the  West  great  men  are  expected  to  be  great 
dressers.  Especially  in  Persia  and  India,  he  who 
affects  simplicity  in  this  respect  will,  if  unknown,  be 
simply  taken  for  a  pauper ;  or,  if  known,  for  a  nat- 
urally uncivilised  person. 


ISO 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   11. 


fastened  on  a  cane  of  the  species  native  to  the  hill-ranges  of  Southern  India, 
which  for  hard  hitting  beats  even  our  ash  plant ;  but  nothing  was  to  be  learned 
from  an  article  which  pilgrims  and  others  have  widely  distributed.  Finally,  the 
thin  hands  found  occupation  over  an  enamelled  iron  flask,  cased  in  a  felt  jacket. 
Cold  tea,  it  so  happened,  was  the  strongest  liquor  which  this  had  ever  held  ; 
and  equally  its  mouth  and  cork  proved  dumb  witnesses.  The  motion  that  it 
was  "  a  mother  of  brandy "  seemed  nevertheless  on  the  point  of  being  carried  ; 
when  the  greatest  talker  among  them  confidently  asserted  that  it  was  a  powder- 
horn  ;   and  a  powder-horn  it  was  voted. 

Mares,  as  a  rule,  need  nothing  more  to  hold  them  when  ridden  than  the  Bedouin 
halter;  but  a  bit  of  the  kind  known  in  Europe  as  the  Mameluke^  is  used  when 
necessary.  The  sketches  which  are  here  presented  show  that,  while  a  piece  of  rope 
or  string  may  serve  for  reins,  the  Arab  townsman's  bit  is  not  a  slight  one. 

Saddled  and  bridled  more  or  less  as  has  been  shown,  the  colt  bred  in  villages 
or  oasis-homesteads  makes  his  d^biit  at  a  fantasia,  or  fan-ids,'^ — a  kind  of  circling 
exercise,  Avith  or  without  the  flourishing,  or  sometimes  throwing,  of  the  ja-rid  or 
lance,  in  which  townsmen  delight,  while  the  Bedouin,  in  their  love  of  the  real 
thing,  sneer  at  it.  A  horse  more  for  show  than  use,  or,  as  we  say,  "  a  band-stand 
horse"  or  "peacock,"  is  called  by  the  Bedouin,  and  would-be  Bedouin,  "a  horse 
of  ^h.&  fan-tds'' ;  or  perhaps  a  "horse  of  the  zaffa,"  i.e.,  one  only  fltted  to  carry 
a  citizen  in  a  marriage  procession.  It  forms  a  pretty  sight  when,  outside  say  of 
Ku-wait  or  Der,  between  the  afternoon  and  evening  prayer-call,  a.  fau-tds  is  held. 
The  striplings  begin  it,  and  by  degrees  it  spreads.  The  greybeards  poise  their 
bd-ku-ras,  or  riding-canes,  and  join  in  it, 

"  In  mazy  motion  intermingled,"^ 

charging,  wheeling,  shouting.  The  faster  the  pace,  the  more  their  spread-eagle 
style  of  horsemanship  shows  itself  Here  and  there,  one  may  see  a  cavalier 
with  a  seat  as  stiff  and  upright  as  a  school -rider's  —  perhaps  from  his  having 
spent  some  winters  in  Bombay,  or  even  ridden  gallops  after  his  own  fashion  on 
Indian  courses.  But  most  Arabs  seem  to  think  that  the  further  they  lean  forward, 
the  more  they  help  the  horse  that  carries  them  ;  like  a  gentleman  rider  of  former 


1  The  introduction  of  this  bit,  name  and  all,  into 
England  may  date  from  the  Crusades.  In  the  Turkish 
body-guards  which  were  formed  in  Egypt  under  the 
successors  of  Saladin,  every  man  was  a  mani-luk,  or 
piece  of  property  J-  and  in  this  way  the  famous  Mame- 
luke Sultans  and  Beys  passed  into  history.  As  for 
the  bit,  its  proper  place  is  a  museum.  Its  tendency 
to  make  a  horse  throw  up  his  head  instead  of  giving 


to  it  may  be  the  fault  of  the  rider ;  but  the  raws 
which  it  produces  in  the  flesh  under  the  lower  jaw  are 
enough  to  condemn  it. 

2  The  explanation  of  a  word  owning  a  common 
Greek  root  with  our  fancy  thus  appearing  among 
Semites  is  its  having  spread  with  the  Aristotelian 
vocabulary. 

"  Shelley,  in  Qucai  Mab. 


CHAP.  IV.  HORSE-BREEDING  AMONG    THE   SETTLED  ARABS. 


iSi 


~~ffi^Sr 


/  -2N 


Arab  Horseman's  Bit  and  Bridle. 


152 


THE  BREEDERS    OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   II. 


days  famous  for  his  long  proboscis,  who,  when  he  won  on  the  post,  as  he  often  did, 

and  "  M by  a  nose"  was  the  judge's  verdict,  used  doubly  to  enjoy  the  joke. 

In  watching  a  fan-tds  of  Arabs,  their  draperies  all  a-flutter,  and  their  bodies 
swayed  in  every  direction,  one  wonders  that  the  mares  so  seldom  fall,  and  the 
riders  so  seldom  tumble  off.  The  Jwrscmans  grave  is  ahaays  open}  is  one  of  their 
sayings ;  but  badly  as  their  horses'  joints,  especially  the  hocks,  fare  in  these 
exercises,  accidents  are  rare. 

Another  feature  of  Arab  life,  both  settled  and  nomadic,  which  bears  on 
Arab  horse  history,  is  the  royal  sport  of  hawking.  In  Arabia  and  Persia, 
the  ancient  union  between  horse  and  hawk  and  greyhound  is  happily  still 
unbroken.  On  arriving  after  mid-day  in  a  Bedouin  encampment,  one  may  find 
that  half  of  it  is  sleeping ;  and  that  the  only  inmate  of  the  Shekh's  coffee-tent  is 
a  sagar^  or  falcon.  Townsmen  spare  no  pains  to  procure  these  birds  from  nests 
in  far-off  mountains.  When  cool  mornings  show  that  the  summer  heats  are  over, 
the  work  of  training  begins ;  and  the  sport  enlivens  the  short  days  of  winter. 
Antelope  and  bustard  (with  Arabs  hii-bd-ra)  are  the  game  flown  at.  When 
the  gazelle  is  sighted,  and  the  bird  cast  off,  a  brace  of  greyhounds  is  slipped. 
Behind  them  goes  the  field,  over  the  dead  level,  as  hard  as  ever  it  can  clatter ; 
mostly  one  man's  friends  or  servants ;  mounted  on  seasoned,  not  to  say  screwed, 
mares,  with  a  sprinkling  of  colts  added.  By  the  end  of  the  season,  these  latter 
have  either  gone  to  pieces  or  galloped  themselves  into  shapely  youngsters,  in 
which  every  point  is  developed.  Such  of  them  as  suit  the  market  are  then 
snapped  up  by  the  jam-bazes  ;  who,  after  a  course  of  stall-feeding,  with  just  as 
much  exercise  as  will  keep  them  from  breaking  their  halters  and  kicking  down 
the  walls,  take  or  send  them  to  Bombay.  One  of  the  many  sights  savouring 
of  antiquity  in  towns  like  Baghdad  and  Mosul  is  a  Persian  Agha  or  native  Bey 
riding  out  a-hawking,  followed  by  two  or  three  generations  of  his  progeny,  and  a 
tail  of  picturesque  falconers  and  henchmen. 

Thus  the  Arab  horse  may  have  a  good  deal  of  work  slipped  into  him,  apart 
from  the  Bedouin  and  Al  ghaz-u.  If  village-bred,  perhaps  he  will  be  sold  when 
he  can  carry  a  saddle  to  some  one  who  will  not  let  him  stand  idle.  In  foal-hood 
he  will  have  enjoyed  his  freedom  round  the  homestead  ;  trotting  after  his  dam 
when  she  is  ridden  on  a  journey ;  developing  bone  and  muscle ;  and  becoming 
familiarised  with  sights  and  sounds  when  he  is  too  young  to  mind  them.  Unfor- 
tunate exceptions  are  the  colts  dropped  in  towns  from  mares  received  as  presents 


1  " Kab-ru  V khai-yal maf-tuh'' 

2  The  Semitic  word  sakr,  a  species  of  falcon,  must .. 
have  passed  with  the  art  of  hawking  from  Asia  into 


Europe.  The  Italians  wrote  it  sagro,  and  we  saker, 
which  name  also  came  to  mean  with  us  a  small 
cannon. 


CHAP.  IV.  HORSE-BREEDING  AMONG    THE   SETTLED   ARABS.  153 

by  Pashas,  Na-kibs,^  and  other  personages  too  exalted  to  care  for  them  till  it  is 
time  to  turn  them  into  money — the  one  thing  which  no  one  ever  seems  too  pre- 
occupied, or  too  well  off,  to  consider.  Not  even  in  India  do  the  collections  of 
amateur  breeders  on  the  "  cabined,  cribbed,  confined  "  system  contain  more  light- 
boned  or  "  sinew-tied  "  horses  than  may  any  morning  be  seen  in  Baghdad,  in  scions 
of  Arabia's  finest  strains,  when  the  grooms  are  riding  a  Pasha's  stud  to  water. 
Partly  by  this  want  of  "  timbei","  and  partly  by  the  skin-diseases  which  run  riot  in  all 
such  overcrowded  and  tainted  stable-yards,  the  town-bred  horse  is  recognisable. 

And  thus  we  see,  not  only  that  the  climate  of  Arabia  favours  the  develop- 
ment of  a  horse  of  the  galloping  type  which  is  associated  in  Europe  with  the 
name  of  blood,  but  that  the  life  of  the  people  tends  to  stamp  their  stock  with  the 
characteristics  proper  to  a  saddle-horse.  True,  to  qualify  their  horses  for  the  title 
oi  pure  saddle-horses  it  is  wanting  that  they  should  have  been  bred  scientifically 
— that  is,  through  the  e.x;clusive  mating,  during  many  generations,  of  those  indi- 
viduals whose  excellence  in  this  respect  had  been  proved.  But  admitting  that 
the  Arabian  is  not  a  perfected  saddle-horse,  yet  he  truly  is  a  saddle-horse.  He 
and  his  progenitors  have  been  that  from  a  very  early  period.  However  much 
he  may  be  used  in  agriculture,  or  as  a  pack-horse,  such  work  only  comes  into 
his  life  by  way  of  interlude  or  accident.  The  horses  which  the  Arabs  employ 
in  servile  drudgery  are  not  of  one  breed  or  class  more  than  of  another.  One 
sometimes  sees  harnessed  to  a  well-rope-  a  friendless  and  forgotten  waif,  in 
whose  skin  the  large  full  veins  stand  out  like  the  fibres  on  a  vine  -  leaf,  and 
which  has  only  to  be  mounted  to  show  the  Najdian  mettle.  Everywhere  under 
the  sweltering  Eastern  sun — in  Egypt,  Arabia,  and  India — where  fast  work,  in 
saddle  or  harness,  is  exacted  by  the  masses  of  the  people  from  their  horses,  it 
surprises  Europeans  how  very  much  better  to  go  than  to  look  at  the  commonest 
hacks  are.  Horses  such  as  in  England  would  pass  into  the  kennel  copper  are 
to  be  seen  in  the  East  carrying  their  owners  or  their  servants,  perhaps  a-hawking, 
perhaps  on  distant  journeys ;  when  they  tumble  down,  rising  again ;  and  when 
they  give  in  at  last,  needing  but  a  few  days'  rest  and  barley  to  restore  them. 
During  a  recent  journey  we  bought,  on  an  emergency,  at  a  road-post  of  the  military 
police  of  the  Osmanli,  an    I'raki    Galloway,   which,    but   for   an  uncommonly  good 


1  Etymologically,  the  Arabic  na-kib  and  Latin 
qicastor  are  not  far  apart  in  meaning.  In  the  early 
Islamic  commonwealth  the  Na-/cib's  functions  re- 
sembled those  of  the  Roman  magistrate.  Later, 
the  same  officials  had  for  their  raison  d'etre  the 
inquiring  into  the  pedigrees  of,  and  superintending, 
all  who  claimed  exemption,  as  descendants  of  the 
Prophet,  from  ordinary  jurisdiction.     Now  their  prin- 


cipal occupation  seems  to  be  the  administration  of 
lands  devoted  to  pious  uses.  Thus,  the  Na-kib  of 
Baghdad  is  hereditary  warden  (inu-ta-wul-lt)  of  the 
tomb  of  Shekh  A'bdu  '1  Ka-dir,  Gi-la-ni  ;  cynosure  of 
all  the  Sun-nite  iVIuslim  equally  of  Central  Asia, 
Afghtaistan,  and  India. 
2  V.  aitic,  p.  47. 


U 


154 


THE  BREEDERS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  II. 


shoulder,  was  by  no  means  built  for  weight-carrying.  Use,  however,  is  second 
nature.  In  several  respects  he  had  suffered  through  carrying,  before  his  bones  were 
fully  formed,  a  gendarme,  whose  saddle  was  always  loaded  up  with  property  ;  but 
he  was  better  served  by  his  defects  than  many  horses  are  by  their  perfections. 
At  any  rate,  he  proved  capable  of  walking  nearly  five  miles  an  hour,  and  marching 
all  day,  under  fifteen  stone,  without  tiring.  European  travellers  in  the  East, 
when  they  are  choosing  horses  for  a  journey,  should  always  look  out  for  such  as 
have  been  working.  Last  year  an  officer  of  the  Simla  "  Intelligence "  Branch, 
who  was  leaving  Baghdad  for  Persia,  bought  in  the  town  a  so-called  roadster ;  and 
after  the  first  march,  one  of  the  poor  animal's  fore-hoofs  came  off!  We  never 
could  find  out  how  it  had  been  put  on. 


JIOSQUE   NEAR    BAGHDAD. 


BOOK     THIRD 

GENERAL    VIEW    OF    THE     ARABIAN 


CHAPTER    I. 


THE    ARAB'S    LOVE    OF    HIS    HORSE. 


N  old  writer  describes  tlie  imagination  as  "  that  forward  delusive  faculty 
ever  intruding  beyond  its  sphere  ;  of  some  assistance  indeed  to  the 
apprehension,  but  the  author  of  all  error."  ^  However  imperfect  this 
view  of  the  illumining  power  may  be,  it  is  one  which  receives  frequent 
illustration  in  lands  of  the  rising  sun,  whereon  is  the  seal  of  antiquity  ;  and  espe- 
cially in  Arabia  a  veil  of  glamour  frequently  comes  between  the  European  traveller 
and  real  objects.  They  who  would  cut  down  like  grass  every  ancient  tradition 
which  does  not  rest  on  historical  evidence,  may  perhaps  consider  that  in  several 
places  our  "delusive  faculty"  has  thus  been  captivated.  But  in  the  preceding 
pages  on  Arab  men  and  Arab  countries,  it  has  at  least  been  our  object  to 
separate  fact  from  fable.  And  it  is  probable  that  the  same  process  will  have  to  be 
carried  a  great  deal  further  in  the  sequel. 

The  fictions  which  content  the  Arabs  as  to  how  their  breed  of  horses  ori- 
ginated will  appear  in  due  season.  Just  now  we  would  speak  of  the  modern 
European  idea  that  the  Arab  horse  is  connected  with  the  Arab  religion.  Two  facts 
are  here  present  which  must  neither  be  overlooked  nor  made  too  prominent.  One 
is,  the  demonstration  of  the  value  of  cavalry  which  the  period  of  the  Flight  afforded 
to  the  Arabs  ;  and  the  other,  that  wherever  the  Kur-an  was  carried  it  promoted  the 
multiplication  of  horses.  In  this  part  of  the  Arabian  structure  layers  of  distinctively 
Jewish  material  or  tradition  are  absent.  According  to  Wellhausen,  the  name 
Israel  means  El  does  battle ;  and  it  was  foreign  to  the  ideal  of  Jehovah's  army 
to  trust  in  an  animal  which  in  Biblical  times  was  very  specially  regarded  as  the 
embodiment  of  strength,  and  the  "  Father  of  Victory."  In  Deut.  xvii.  i6,  the 
breeding  and  the  importing  of  horses  were  equally  forbidden.  Moses'  lieutenant 
and  successor,  Joshua,  after  defeating  the  five  kings  of  the  Amorites  near  Gibeon, 

^  Bishop  Butler,  in  Analogy,  Part  I.,  ch.  i. 


1 58  GENERAL    VIEW   OF  THE  ARABIAN.  book  ill. 

"houghed  their  horses  and  burnt  their  chariots  with  fire"  (Josh.  xi.  c))}  The 
Prophet  and  leader  of  the  Arabs  adopted  the  opposite  policy  in  this  respect  at  once 
in  civil  and  military  affairs.  We  find  Cromwell,  on  one  occasion,  writing  to  his 
Auditor-general  that  "  if  a  man  has  not  good  weapons,  horses,  and  harness,  he  is  as 
nought."  2  And  injunctions  of  the  same  practical  tenor  occur  both  in  the  Prophet's 
'  Sayings '  and  in  the  Kur-an.  Among  the  former  is  that  which  occupies  the  place  of 
honour  on  our  title-page ;  and  its  meaning  is,  though  it  has  many  variants.  Weal  is 
knotted  in  the  forelocks  of  horses  till  the  day  of  jttdgment.  The  following  three  pas- 
sages of  Al  Kur-in  will  serve  to  show  the  reader  how  the  one  book  used  in  Muslim 
worship — the  first,  and  in  millions  of  cases  the  last  and  only,  text-book  of  Muslim 
children — tends  to  make  the  Arabs  horsemen.  Takinof  first  a  "revelation"  of 
the  militant  species,  we  find  this  direction  issued,  in  S.  viii.,  from  Medina,  for  the 
employment  of  cavalry  to  defend  the  rising  Arabian  commonwealth  : — 

And  set  against  them  all  that  ye  can  of  force. 

And  of  pickets  of  horse  [on  the  frontier] ; 

Whereby  ye  shall  make  afraid  the  enemy  of  Allah,^  and  your  own  enemy; 

And  others  besides  them,  whom  ye  know  not ; — God  knoweth  them. 

Elsewhere  (S.  xvi.),  in  an  enumeration  of  God's  works,  it  is  brought  to  mind  how 
"  [He]  hath  created  for  you  horses,  mules,  and  asses,  that  ye  may  ride  on  them;  and  for  ornature." 

While  in  a  third  and  more  rhetorical  passage,  which  is  much  admired  by  the 
Arabs,  to  give  intensity  to  a  denunciation  of  man's  ingratitude,  God  is  made  thus 
to  adjure  the   Horse  : — 

By  the  hard-breathing  chargers — 

The  spark-compelling  strikers  of  fire — 

The  forayers  at  daybreak — ■ 

When  they  stir  up  the  dust, 

And  charge  home  into  a  collected  number — 

Verily  Man  is  an  ingrate  towards  his  Lord : 

Ay,  and  he  knows  it ! 

And  truly  his  love  of  worldly  weal  has  waxed  strong. 

Wots  he  not,  when  there  shall  be  brought  forth  what  is  in  the  graves ; 

And  made  manifest  what  is  in  the  breasts; 

Surely  his  God  on  that  day  shall  know  him. 

— S.  c. 

The  first  time  that  the  writer  heard  the  second  of  the  above  pieces  quoted  was 
in  a  coffee-house  on  the  Euphrates,  in  which  a  light-hearted  horse-dealer  was  edifying 

^  Nevertheless   David,  the  second  king  of  Israel,     I     dicates  his  having  "houghed  all  the  chariot  horses, 
whose  genius  was  imperial   more   than   tribal,   after     !     but  reserved  of  them  for  an  hundred  chariots." 
smiting  the  Zoba',  to  this  day  a  Euphrates  nation,  and  -  Quoted  by  Captain  Nolan  in  his  book  on  Cavalry. 


capturing  1700  horsemen  and  20,000  footmen,  took 
the  opportunity  of  equipping  a  small  mounted  force. 
The  account  of  this  in  2  Sam.  viii.  4  (revis.  vers.)  in- 


5  The  primary  reference  is  to  the  Mecca  recusants, 
who  had  not  as  yet  submitted  to  the  Prophet. 


CHAP.    I. 


THE  ARAB'S  LOVE    OF  HIS   HORSE. 


159 


his  friends  with  the  interpretation,  that  two  sorts  of  horses  had  been  made — one 
for  work,  and  the  other  for  ornament ;  and  that  it  was  every  one's  own  concern  to 
see  that  he  did  not  buy  the  wrong  article.  Only  one  or  two  of  the  people  around 
approved  of  this,  and  a  serious  greybeard  exhorted  the  speaker  to  "  repent  and 
fear  Allah";  but  what  chiefly  struck  us  was  that  the  passage  cited  failed  to  include 
the  Camel.  When  the  quotation  was  verified,  it  appeared  that,  in  the  previous  text, 
the  ancient  beast  obtains  recognition  under  the  general  name  of  cattle ; — carriers  of 
yoiir  loads  to  cities  zuhich  ye  cmild  not  otherwise  reach  save  luith  wearied  bodies.  In  the 
earliest  times  referred  to  in  the  oldest  existing  literature,  the  camel  was  used  equally 
for  riding ;  ^  in  the  caravan  trade  of  the  "  Ishmaelites  "  with  Egypt ;  -  and  in  war  :  ^ 
but  in  antiquity,  as  now,  its  prominent  function  was  that  of  travelling  packman. 
As  for  the  Ass,  the  East  is  not  of  one  mind  about  him.  Al  Kur-an,  while  thus  in  one 
place  bracketing  him  with  the  Horse,  in  another  (S.  xxxi.)  divulges  that  the  most 
hideotis  of  smrnds  is  his  braying.  The  Bedouin  Arab,  as  has  been  seen,  despises  him, 
and  will  hardly  return  the  good-morning  ^  of  one  who  is  riding  him.  But  in  numer- 
ous oriental  cities,  notably  Damascus  and  Aleppo,  a  long-eared  ambler  is  a  favourite 
mount  both  of  the  religious  and  the  mercantile  classes.  Steeds  of  this  kind  are  so 
easy  and  amenable,  that  their  owners  are  apt  to  form  unreasonable  expectations. 
Thus,  a  Muf-ti  once  commissioned  a  dealer  to  procure  for  him  a  brisk  she-ass, 
which  he  might  leave  unexercised  from  one  Friday  to  another,  and  nevertheless 
find,  when  mounted,  perfectly  staid  and  contented.  The  man's  answer  was,  that  if 
ever  it  should  please  the  Almighty  to  transform  a  person  of  learning  into  a  donkey, 
he  would  buy  the  animal  for  his  Reverence  ;  and  his  words  deserve  to  be  remem- 
bered by  those  of  our  countrymen  who  are  always  asking  their  friends  to  help  them 
to  find  ideal  horses.  The  Mule  also  is  largely  bred  by  the  Kurds  and  the  agricul- 
tural Arabs ;  but  the  latter  prefer  to  sell  him  than  to  use  him.  One  great  object 
of  Arab  hatred  is  a  Persian  ;  and  another  is  a  Kurd  :  the  former  because  he  goes 
so  dangerously  near  worshipping  A'li ;  the  latter,  because  he  is  held  to  be  a  savage.^ 
If  the  elephant  belong  to  Buddhism,  and  the  cow  to  Brahmanism,  similarly  the 
Arab  horse  may  be  claimed  by  Sun-nite,  and  the  mule  by  Shi-ite,  Islamism. 
The  stream  of  time  has  distributed  among  the  Arabs  a  tradition  that  the  Chaldeans 
attempted  to  burn  Abraham  ;  ^  that  mules  carried  the  firewood ;  and  that  their 
sterility  forms  the  punishment!     In  the  Arab  biographies  of  the  Prophet,  it  is  men- 


^  Gen.  xxiv.  61.        ^  Gen.  xxxvii.  25.        ^  Isa.  xxi.  7. 

■*  In  Arabic,  Sab-ba-ha-ka  'llah  bi  V  'khazr:  lit., 
May  Allah  morning  thee  "with  good.  It  is  only  be- 
tween Muslim  that  the  greeting  of  "  Sa-lam  "  (from  the 
same  root  as  Islam)  mutually  passes. 

*  Arabs  say,  The  Ktcrdi,  even  if  a  Walt  (Governor), 
is  still  a  bear.  Nevertheless,  many  of  Islam's  great 
doctors  have  been  natives  of  Kurdi  towns  like  Kar- 
kiik,  Su-lai-ma-ni-ya,  and  Arbil. 


^  In  Hebrew  «;-means_/f;v.  The  Rabbinic  tradition 
that  the  Chaldees  cast  Abraham  into  the  fire,  like 
Shadrach  and  his  two  companions,  and  with  the  same 
result,  for  "  dissent "  from  idol-worship,  suggests  the 
I'eading  of  tir  in  this  sense,  and  not  as  a  place-name, 
in  Gen.  xv.  7  {%>.  ante,  p.  iii,  in  fn.  2).  The  same 
representation  is  not  unknown  in  Eastern  and  Abys- 
sinian Christianity.  Al  Kur-an  (S.  xxi.)  has  further 
diffused  it. 


i6o 


GENERAL    VIEW   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


tioiied  that  he  prized  and  rode  a  white  mule  which  he  had  received  as  tribute  from 
the  Roman  Governor  of  Egypt.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  related  that  when  a 
second  mule  was  presented  to  him,  and  A'li  wished  to  breed  another  like  it,  he 
expressed  the  opinion  that  no  one  who  possessed  understanding  would  propose  so 
unnatural  a  cross !  But  to  return.  Wherever  Muhammad's  words  are  current,  a 
halo  surrounds  the  Horse.  In  the  heart  of  Abyssinia,  among  the  Muslim  Gallas, 
we  have  heard  Mullas  telling  how  God  honoured  him,  by  swearing  an  oath  upon  him. 
European  readers  probably  think  all  this  very  trivial ;  and  in  order  to  understand 
its  limits,  two  series  of  facts  already  glanced  at  must  be  recalled  :  one,  that  the 
Arabian  breed  was  perfected  long  before  Muhammad,  so  that  the  Arabs  when 
they  made  their  first  grand  entry  into  history  were  already  horsemen  and  sons  of 
horsemen  ;  the  other,  that  Arabia  is  by  no  means  so  religious  a  country  as  many 
imagine.  As  touching  townsmen,  Muhammad's  ordinances — if  we  except  the  five 
daily  prayer-calls,  and  the  fast  from  sunrise  to  sunset  ^  in  the  month  Ra-ma-dhan — 
follow  the  lines  of  human  nature.  In  regard  to  the  Bedouin,  it  has  been  noted  how 
the  artificiality  of  the  Islamic  structure,  its  adaptations  or  compromises,  and  above 
all,  the  nodules  of  jDaganism  which  are  embedded  in  it,^  made  the  nomads  view  it  as 
a  putting  of  new  wine  into  old  bottles — a  thing  for  townsmen,  not  for  them.  All 
this  is  perhaps  scarcely  enough  allowed  for  by  foreigners.  Indian  Muslim  think  that 
the  city  of  the  Ku-raish — one  of  the  few  places  in  the  world  where  the  only  God- 
name  that  is  heard  is  Allah — must  be  like  a  gate  of  Heaven  ;  but  when  the  pilgrim 
caravan  deposits  them  there,  the  laxity  of  Meccan  morals  surprises  them.^  According 
to  a  well-known  proverb,  it  is  darkest  under  the  lantern.  With  the  important 
exception  of  the  open  sale  of  spirituous  liquors  being  prevented,  the  "  Holy  City" 
is  as  secular  as  Bombay.  But  the  nominal  headquarters  of  the  faith,  and  its  covet- 
ous spendthrift  inhabitants,  are  peculiar  in  this  respect.  Towns  of  El  Islam  which 
do  not  live  on  the  piety  of  pilgrims  produce,  as  a  rule,  a  considerable  growth  of 
sanctity  of  their  own.  The  grip  which  the  Kur-an  has  of  the  great  body  of  the 
people  well  supports  the  title  which  has  come  down  with  it  of  the  "  Prophet's 
Miracle."      The  volume  itself,   in  every  household  fortunate  enough  to   possess  a 


^  The  words  are  :  And  eat  and  drink  {i.e.,  during 
the  hours  of  darkness)  till,  by  reason  of  the  daybreak, 
there  be  distinguished  by  you  a  white  thread  from  a 
black  thread :  then  keep  the  fast  till  ?iight. — S.  ii. 

2  Even  so  the  Pope's  instructions  to  the  first  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  provided  that  heathenism  should 
not  be  abruptly  broken  with  ;  and  that  the  existing 
temples  should  be  used  for  Christian  worship.  Few 
sensible  men  think  the  less  of  Christmas,  as  a  Chris- 
tian festival,  because  several  of  its  customs  point  to 
the  old  pagan  worship  with  which  the  feast  was  first 


associated.  Many  other,  and  more  important,  ob- 
servances of  Christendom  represent  a  carrying  over 
and  adaptation  of  earher  usages. 

'  This  reference  to  the  corruption  of  manners  in 
Mecca  does  not  rest  merely  on  the  late  Sir  R.  Bur- 
ton's description,  which  is  now  40  years  old.  At  the 
present  time,  the  accounts  of  Turkish  and  Indian  pil- 
grims amply  confirm  it.  Since  the  decline  of  the 
Ku-raish,  the  city  of  the  Ka'ba  has  been  growing  less 
and  less  Arab.  Even  its  more  or  less  fixed  population 
is  full  of  foreign  layers. 


CHAP.  I.  THE  ARAB'S   LOVE   OF  HIS  HORSE.  161 

copy,  is  wrapped  in  a  cover,  to  guard  it  against  unwortliy  contact ;  and  when  not 
in  use,  reposes  in  honourable  separation  on  a  Httle  wooden  stand  wliich  is  specially 
made  for  it.  The  Book  is  appealed  to  on  all  occasions.  The  shopkeeper,  when 
he  removes  his  shutters,  sits  down  to  pore  over  it,  or  makes  his  little  son  recite  it, 
till  the  day's  traffic  and  custom  begin.  The  Governor  of  the  province,  when  not  of 
the  reforming  and  absinthe  school,  places  it  near  him  in  his  divan,  atop  of  all  the 
newfangled  codes  and  circulars  of  his  Government.  Old  and  young,  rich  and  poor, 
saint  and  sinner,  reverence  and  quote  it  as  the  Word  of  God  in  Heaven.  Hence  it 
follows  that  attachment  to  horses  assumes  for  townsmen  almost  the  character  of 
a  religious  virtue.  In  General  Daumas'  work  on  the  Arabs  in  Africa,  it  is  stated 
that  the  Amir  A'bdu  '1  K^-dir,  when  at  the  height  of  his  power  in  Algeria,  inflicted 
death  on  every  Muslim  who  was  convicted  of  selling  a  horse  to  a  Christian.  It  is 
likely  that  religious  fervour,  combined  with  oriental  sentiment,  had  a  share  in  this 
policy.  But  next  to  a  full  treasury  and  a  martial  population,  a  copious  supply  of 
horses  ranks  highest  among  the  elements  of  a  non-maritime  nation's  strength.  At 
this  day  the  Sublime  Porte  is  too  easily  moved  by  the  representations  of  its  officials 
to  try  to  stop  the  export  of  horses.  But  we  never  knew  an  Arab  who  approved  of 
this  arbitrary  action  ;  and  even  the  Wah-ha-bis  of  the  central  districts  embark  their 
money  in  the  Indian  horse  trade. 

The  recurrence  of  the  name  Wah-ha-bi,  or,  as  we  shall  write  it,  Wahabi,  sug- 
gests that  it  may  be  well  to  qualify  the  general  facts  of  the  Bedouin's  coldness 
towards  Islamism  by  bringing  out  a  little  further  the  puritanic  social  organisation 
which  was  founded  in  Arabia,  ten  centuries  after  Muhammad,  by  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab.^ 
This  too  was  a  Muhammad,  whose  birthplace  was  in  the  heart  of  Najd.  His  full 
name  was  Muhammadu  'bn  A'bdi  '1  Wah-hab  ;  but,  according  to  usaee,  he  is  known 
by  the  paternal  part  of  it.  His  followers  bear  the  designation  of  Wahabi.  In  vivid 
personal  piety,  rigorous  application  to  study,  and  devotion  to  the  theocratic  ideal,  he 
was  another  Calvin  —  a  Puritan,  or  purist,  who  believed  that  he  had  found  the 
original  creed  and  way  to  heaven.  Yet  must  this  name  Puritan,  like  every  other 
term  which  is  transplanted  from  one  religion  to  another,  be  applied  with  caution. 
Few  now  believe  Puritanism  to  be  the  pure  ore  of  Christianity.  And,  similarly, 
although  the  Damascus  doctors  have  pronounced  Wahabyism  the  true  Is-lam,-  it 
is  best,  at  least  for  Europeans,  to  regard  this  as  doubtful.  Long  ago,  in  the  capital 
of  Scotland,  an  eminent  Hebraist  used  to  tell  his  students  that  "  Calvinism  was 
Jehovahism."     Precisely  so,  the  Wahabi  says  that  Wahabyism  is  Allahism  ;  the  un- 


^  A^bdu  V  Wah-hab  means,  Servant  oj  the  Great 
Giver. 

-  We  cannot  give  chapter  and  verse  for  this  decis- 
ion, but  learned  men  in  Baghdad  quote  it :  also  Prof. 


Kuenen,  of  Leiden,  at  p.  51  of  his  "  Hibbert  Lecture" 
for  1S82,  on  National  Religions  and  Universal  Reli- 
scions. 


X 


162 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  III. 


adulterated  worship  of  the  Only  One,  as  Muhammad  preached  it.  Passing  from  this, 
however,  among  the  visible  features  of  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab's  system  are,  antagonism 
to  secular  rule ;  and  the  putting  down  of  saint- worship,  as  of  every  other  practice 
which  tends  to  approximate  the  created  to  the  Creator.  In  Baghdad,  a  proverb  runs 
that  for  every  noble  horse  which  neighs,  a  hundred  asses  set  up  their  discords ;  and 
the  same  thing  happens  in  religions.  To  make  a  Wahabi,  it  needs  some  approach 
to  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab's  mastery  of  theological  learning,  and  some  slight  infusion  of 
his  rare  and  elevated  qualities,  matured  by  long  travel.  It  is  outside  the  scope  of 
our  volume  to  open  further  the  slight  views  of  Wahabite  history  which  have 
appeared  in  other  contexts.^  In  again  referring  to  the  half-religious,  half-military 
despotism  which  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab,  and  his  princely  convert,  the  first  historic  Ibnu 
's  Su-u'd  of  Du-rai-t'-ya,  founded,  we  wish  but  to  speak  of  its  influences  on  nomad 
manners.  It  would  be  wrong  to  suppose  that  the  essentially  Arabian  elements 
which  entered  into  the  Wahabite  government  made  it  palatable  to  the  Bedouin 
nations.  Its  power,  when  at  its  height,  was  as  centralised  as  that  of  the  Turks  ;  and 
it  was  supported  by  taxation  and  a  standing  army.  The  mere  fact  of  its  being  a 
"  Government "  was  enough  to  set  all  those  against  it  who  loved  the  natural  manners 
of  the  desert.  True,  the  leaders  of  the  movement  were  Bedouin,  mainly  of  the 
Ae-ni-za  ;  and  its  fortunes  depended  on  the  prowess  of  Arabian  Shekhs.  But  these 
were  the  players  of  the  game,  or  their  followers^the  throwers-in  for  the  spoils  and 
prizes.  The  masses  of  the  Arabian  nomads  clung  to, their  traditions.  Hordes  of 
them  migrated,  so  that  Wahabi  became  another  name  for  Najdian  marauder,  as  far 
north  as  Mosul.  Even  then,  in  Najd  itself,  tribal  jealousies  brought  about  numerous 
openings  in  Wahabyism.  Had  this  been  otherwise,  Turkish  and  Egyptian  mercen- 
aries, with  all  their  hammering,  would  never  have  succeeded  in  breaking  it.  As  for 
townsmen,  except  in  a  few  districts,  the  Wahabite  yoke  sat  even  more  uneasily  on 
them  than  on  their  brethren  in  the  open.  A  cudgelling  at  every  lapse  from  strict 
religious  practice  was  felt  to  be  too  high  a  price  to  pay  for  purity  of  doctrine. 
Owners  of  houses  and  orchards  could  hardly  disappear  like  Bedouin.  Their  only 
safeguard  was  conformity ;  but  very  many,  according  to  Burckhardt,  sold  their 
mares  rather  than  follow  the  Ibn  Su-u'ds.  The  Wahabite  system  was  as  rigorous 
in  small  matters  as  in  great.  It  was  not  enough  to  sack,  or  lay  in  ruins,  every 
tomb  at  Mecca,  Kar-ba-la,  and  Medina,  the  Prophet's  included,  round  which,  through 
the  offering  of  gifts  and  vows  to  the  departed,  something  like  polytheistic  cults  had 
formed.^     Absolute  authority,  against  which  no  appeal  was  possible,  enforced  the 


.1   K  p.  30,  ante,  f.n.  2  ;  et  Book  I.,  chap.  ■i,;passim. 
"  The   Prophet  said.  Do  not  pray  towards  tombs. 
Following  Knox's  maxim  that  "  the  best  way  to  keep 
the  rooks  from  returning  was  to  pull  down  their  nests," 


in  1801  a  Wahabite  anny  not  only  cleared  Husain's 
tomb  at  Kar-ba-la  of  all  "  idolatrous  "  relics,  but  regu- 
larly demolished  it ;  at  the  same  time  that  the  town 
was  plundered,  and  its  male  inhabitants  slain. 


CHAP.   I. 


THE  ARAB'S   LOVE   OF  HIS  HORSE. 


1(53 


outward  signs  of  piety.  All  amusements  were  tabooed.  In  order  that  the  dress 
might  be  in  keeping  with  the  sanctimonious  long-drawn  visage,  the  wearing  of  silk, 
or  ornaments,  or  gay  clothing,  was  prohibited.  In  such  matters  as  public  prayer, 
and  the  observance  of  the  yearly  fast,  the  reins  were  drawn  very  tight.  Ar 
Ri-adh,  the  capital,  and  other  towns,  maintained  for  this  purpose  a  machinery 
resembling  that  of  Geneva.  Elders  ^  patrolled  the  streets  on  Fridays  when  the 
mosques  -  were  full,  attended  by  slaves  for  the  prompt  castigation  of  loiterers.^ 
These  inquisitors  entered  every  home,  and  even  claimed  the  right  of  intruding  on 
the  A-mir,  and  advising  him,  as  John  Knox  did  Queen  Mary.  The  theocratic 
organisation  was  developed  to  an  extent  unknown  in  Europe,  where  there  always 
is  a  separate  political  administration  with  which  the  clergy,  or  congregation,  have 
to  reckon.*  So  far  as  this  went,  they  who  lived  by  their  right  hand  in  their 
own  wildernesses  might  laugh  at  it  when  the  news  reached  them.  The  desert 
contains  no  sacred  edifices  into  which  men  can  be  driven.  The  features  of  the 
Bedouin  are  naturally  grave.  Even  in  their  summer  feasts,  when  their  boys  are 
circumcised  by  wandering  barbers,  and  the  chorus-chanting  maidens  put  on  feathers 
and  bright  kerchiefs,  their  gaiety   is  that  of  people  who  live  on   milk   in  various 


1  Called  locally  Mud-da-i'-yin,  or  exactors. 

^  In  Arabic,  mas-jidj  lit.,  place  of  pi'ostration. 
Mas-jid  is  the  generic  term  for  a  house  of  prayer. 
The  sanctuary  to  which  (in  Arabia,  chiefly  in  the 
Sunnite  body)  the  people  resort,  congregaiionally, 
especially  on  Fridays,  is  called  Al  JA-mi'  (short  for 
Al  Mas-jidu  V  Ja-mi\  i.e.,  Mosque  which  collects 
7nen). 

^  Scotland  once  enjoyed  similar  advantages.  In 
Chambers's  Traditions  of  Edinburgh  (1847  edit.,  p.  31) 
we  read:  "It  was  in  those  days"  (about  1735)  "a 
custom  to  patrol  the  streets  during  the  time  of  divine 
service,  and  take  into  captivity  all  persons  found 
walking  abroad,  and  indeed  make  seizure  of  what- 
ever could  be  regarded  as  guilty  of  Sabbath-breaking." 

*  Two  high  points  of  Wahabyism,  namely,  "  con- 
version" through  conquest,  and  the  repudiation  of 
rulers  who  fall  short  of  the  theocratic  ideal,  tend  to 
give  political  interest  to  the  question  of  whether  this 
is  Al  Is-lim,  or  a  misinterpretation  of  it.  The  final 
authority — Al  Kur-an — explicitly  announces  that  Allah 
does  not  lay  on  any  man's  C07iscie??ce  the  duty  of  at- 
tempting that  which  is  impossible  (S.  ii.)  According- 
ly, all  moderate  authorities  are  of  opinion  that,  in 
ce?-tai?i  circumstances  and  with  certain  important 
limitations,  a  Muslim  people  may,  and  must,  submit 
to  a  Government  whose  faith  is  not  their  faith.  Simi- 
larly, the  precept  which  enjoins  Pilgrimage  is  made 
conditional  on  the  possession  of  the  necessary  means 


or  ability.  In  regard  to  propagandism,  the  fact  has 
too  much  escaped  notice  that  Al  Is-lam  has,  from  the 
first,  protected  Christians,-  and  other  "  people  of  the 
Book,"  on  .the  easy  terms  of  their  ceasing  to  fight 
against  it,  and  paying  tribute.  The  keynote  is,  the 
noble  text  in  S.  ii.,  Let  there  be  no  compelling  one  to 
do  a  thing  in  religion.  It  is  perfectly  true  that 
utterances  apparently  of  a  different  tenor  were  put 
forth  later,  notably  in  Su-ra  ix.  ;  but  such  were  di- 
rected against  the  public  enemies  of  the  Arab  empire, 
— those  who  neither  had  embraced  Islamism  nor  sub- 
mitted and  paid  tribute.  Muhammad's  Su-ras  cover 
about  twenty-three  years  of  momentous  Arabian  his- 
tory, and  in  order  to  understand  them,  it  is  necessary 
to  study  the  situations  out  of  which  they  severally 
arose.  Due  allowance  rnust  also  be  made  for  the 
tendencies  of  human  nature,  especially  under  the  ex- 
citement of  campaigns  and  conquest.  But,  on  the 
whole,  the  Muslim  annals  abound  in  bright  exam- 
ples of  toleration.  In  Spain,  when  the  success  of 
a  mere  maritime  ghaz-u  from  the  opposite  coast  of 
Africa  opened  the  country  to  Mii-sa,  ibn  Nu-sair, 
and  his  lieutenants  (A.D.  711),  the  indulgence  shown 
to  Jews  and  Christians  was,  for  that  period,  remark- 
able. In  India,  under  its  Muslim  emperors,  the 
Hindus  held  high  office.  At  this  day  the  Hyderabad 
Government  builds,  or  helps  to  build,  places  of  wor- 
ship for  its  Christian  employees  ;  which  is  more  than 
we  do  for  our  Muslim  ones. 


1 64 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


forms,  or  on  bread  dipped  in  melted  butter ;  and  rarely  partake  of  animal  food. 
But  there  was  one  thing  in  Wahabyism  which  the  Bedouin  hated,  and  that  was  its 
intolerance  of  tobacco ;  perhaps  because  considered  an  intoxicant,  perhaps  merely  as 
a  superfluous  "fleshly  indulgence."^  If  the  black  juice  of  the  Mocha  berry  is  as 
his  life's  blood  to  the  nomadic  Semite,  the  smoke  of  his  pipe  is  as  the  breath  of  his 
nostrils.  Truly,  when  one  is  staying  with  him,  it  looks  as  if  in  his  lazy  dreamy  tent- 
life,  tobacco  served  him  in  lieu  of  other  sustenance.^  In  vain  does  the  strict  Wahabi 
apply  to  this  favourite  herb  the  epithet  of  Al  Makh-zi,  or  the  execrable.  No 
sooner  is  a  Bad-u  seated  in  a  company,  than  he  pulls  out  a  little  bag  in  which  is 
a  clay  pipe-bowl ;  or  perhaps,  as  he  depends  for  that  on  pedlars,  a  substitute  in  wood 
or  bone  of  his  own  carving.  If  no  one  offer  to  supply  him,  a  pinch  of  the  drug 
is  next  produced,  and  then  a  short  wooden  stem  ;  though  frequently  the  sa-bU^ 
itself  is  put  to  the  lips.  What  the  wine-cup  is  in  European  poetry,  the  pipe-bowl 
is  in  the  unwritten  song-book  of  the  Arabs.      Come  fill  up  the  pipe  with  the  tobacco 

of this  locally  celebrated  vendor  or  the  other,  does  duty  in  the  tents  of  the 

nomads  for  the  lyrics  about  "  mantling  cups  "  and  "  purple  wine  "  which  permeate 
European  literature. 

The  fact  of  Wahabyism,  in  spite  of  its  rigours,  having  so  upreared  itself  in 
Arabia  is  as  remarkable  as  it  is  apparent.  At  first  from  Du-rai-i'-ya,  and  after- 
wards, when  an  Egyptian  general  had  laid  that  in  ruins,  from  the  new  capital,  Ar 
Ri-adh,  the  light  of  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab's  lantern  spread  over  spaces  till  then  unclaimed 
by  Islamism.  One  consequence  of  this  has  doubtless  been  to  place  the  Horse  on  a 
higher  level  than  ever  in  the  estimation  of  the  Arabs,  as  a  means  of  giving  force 
and  wings  to  armies.  But  more  to  our  present  purpose  is  the  effect  which,  as  seen 
already,  the  wars  between  the  Osmanli  and  the  Wahabis  had,  in  transferring  to 
other  countries  large  numbers  of  the  best  mares  in  Najd,  partly  as  the  spoil  of 
military  officers,  and  partly  with  their  emigrant  owners. 

Out  of  this  view  of  modern  Arab  history  there  even  comes  an  illustration  of 


^  Here  again  Scottish  Puritanism  furnishes  an  ana- 
logy. Lockhart  says  in  his  Life  of  Sir  W.  Scott 
(vol.  i.  p.  312):  As  a  "Presbyterian  of  the  old 
school,  .  .  .  Scott's  father  .  .  .  was  habitually  ascetic 
in  his  habits.  1  have  heard  his  son  tell  that  it  was 
common  with  him,  if  any  one  observed  that  the  soup 
was  good,  to  taste  it  again  and  say,  'Yes,  it  is  too 
good,  bairns,'  and  dash  a  tumbler  of  cold  water  into 
his  plate."  In  Wahabyism,  the  prohibition  of  tobacco 
does  not  stand  alone,  but  extends,  as  has  been  seen, 
to  other  articles  not  less  innocent  than  a  basin  of  good 
soup. 

-  The  following  17th  century  verses  show  that  amid 
all  the  ups  and  downs  of  tQbacco,  and  the  fulminations 


and  penal  enactments  which  have  been  levelled 
against  it,  the  sedative  effect  which  it  produces  on  the 
stomach  has  long  been  known  in  other  countries  than 
Arabia  : — 

"  Much  meat  doth  gluttony  procure, 
To  feed  men  fat  as  swine  ; 
But  he's  a  frugal  man  indeed 
That  with  a  leaf  can  dine. 

He  needs  no  napkin  for  his  hands. 

His  finger-ends  to  wipe. 
That  hatli  his  kitchen  in  a  bo.\ ; 

His  roast-meat  in  a  pipe." 

^  The  pipe-bowl,  or  sa-Ml,  is  called  bus  in  the  speech 
of  the  Bedouin, 


CHAP.   I. 


THE  ARAB'S   LOVE   OF  HIS  HORSE. 


1 65 


what  a  small  place  the  world  is ;  or  rather,  of  how  the  events  that  happen  in  it 
depend  on  one  another.  The  three  patriarchal  and  immortal  horses  of  English 
Turf  history,  the  Byerly  Turk,  Darley  Arabian,  and  Godolphin,^  were  exported 
either  before  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab  was  born  or  before  he  began  to  preach.  The  only 
one  of  them  whose  lineage  has  ever  been  established,  the  Darley,  was  bought,^  as 
has  been  seen,  in  Queen  Anne's  reign.  But  without  going  so  far  back,  it  is  easy 
to  name  valuable  Arabians  that  have  found  their  way  to  Europe  in  the  present 
century,  because  of  the  troubled  condition  which  prevailed  down  to  a  recent  period 
in  inner  Arabia.  Take,  for  example.  Dervish,  one  of  a  group  which  is  depicted  in 
a  future  chapter.  Sidn&y's  Book  of  t/ie  Horse  cont-ains  the  following  history  of  this 
genuine  son  of  the  desert,  from  the  pen  of  his  owner,  Mr  George  Samuel  : — 

"  Dervish  was  taken  in  a  skirmish  between  the  troops  of  A'li  Pasha  of  Baghdad  and  some 
of  the  Wahabis  in  the  Najd  country.  A  friend  of  mine.  General  Chzanowski,  was  in  the  aftair  ; 
and  A'li  Pasha  made  him  a  present  of  the  colt,  then  a  yearling.  The  General  was  attached  to 
our  Embassy  at  Constantinople.  He  brought  Dervish  and  an  Arabian  mare  of  the  Aeniza 
breed  back  with  him.  I  purchased  them  and  sent  them  home  in  1842.  Eventually  I  sold 
Dervish  to  Count  Lavish,  a  German  nobleman.  The  horse  died  in  1863,  having  been  the  sire 
of  about  300  colts  and  fillies." 

And  now  to  bring  together  the  results  which  have  been  arrived  at.  Notwith- 
standing the  impulse  given  to  Islamism  by  the  Wahabite  "revival,"  the  Arabian 
nomad  has  to  a  great  extent  remained  outside  of  the  current.  The  mare  which 
none  can  rival  confers  so  many  benefits  on  him,  that  town  lore  cannot  add  to  his 
appreciation  of  her.  What  the  cleverest  collie  is  to  the  Cheviot  shepherd,  gives 
but  a  faint  idea  of  what  his  mare  is  to  the  desert  pricker.  The  only  instance 
known  in  Scotland  of  a  dog  which  helped  his  master  to  increase  his  flocks  by 
transferences  from  those  of  others  ended  tragically  —  that  is,  at  the  end  of  a 
rope — both  for  the  biped  and  the  quadruped.  In  Arabia,  many  a  one  will  want 
for  milk  and  wool  and  mutton,  sooner  than  he  whose  mare  is  always  saddled. 
The  owner  of  a  Derby  winner  and  first  favourite  for  the  great  St  Leger  does  not 
cast  so  great  a  shadow,  as  he  does  on  the  superiority  of  whose  mare  the  safety  of 
the  flocks  and  herds  depends.     For  her  sake  he  may  be  asked  to  marry  an  orphan's 


1   V.  ante,  p.  138,  f.n.  i. 

-  By  Mr  Thomas  Darley,  agent  of  an  English  mer- 
cantile firm  at  Aleppo.  In  1705  the  colt  was  sent 
from  Aleppo,  as  a  present,  to  John  Brewster  Darley, 
Esq.  of  Aldby  Park,  near  York,  a  brother  of  the 
gentleman  who  had  bought  him.  The  letter  which 
accompanied  him  expressed  a  modest  hope  that  he 
would  "not  be  much  disliked"  in  England,  seeing 
that  he  was  "  highly  esteemed "  at  Aleppo,  and  such 
as   could   have   been    "  sold   at   a   very   considerable 


price."  The  Sporti7ig  Magazine  for  December  1823 
contains  an  account  of  the  horse,  with  his  portrait. 
To  verify  the  latter,  we  had  a  copy  made  of  the 
original  painting  still  hanging  in  the  hall  at  Aldby : 
and  the  copy  thus  obtained  perfectly  corresponds 
with  the  likeness  which  the  Sporting  Magazine  gives. 
Another  reproduction  of  the  same  old  picture  appears 
in  Portraits  of  Celebrated  Race-Horses,  by  T.  H. 
Taunton,  M.A.  :  Sampson,  Low,  Marston,  1887  ;  vol. 
i.  p.  I. 


1 66  GENERAL    VIEW   OF    THE   ARABIAN.  BOOK  ill. 

ten  score  camels;  as,  in  other  countries,  one  may  marry  lands  and  houses.     If  he 

rear  a  colt  from  her,  he  is  everywhere  received  with  consideration  because  of  his 

horse  ;  and  his  own  kindred  will  not,  if  they  can  help  it,  let  him  leave  them.     Under 

any  circumstances,  the  desert  gallant   experiences  the  keenest   pangs  when  he  is 

forced  to  surrender  his  mare  as  a  prize  to  a  better-mounted  adversary.      But  if 

he  have 

"  Nursed  the  pinion  which  impelled  the  steel,"  ^ — 

that  is,  if  his  own  tents  produced  the  stock  which  has  got  the  better  of  him, — his 
plight  is  that  of  him  who  is  beaten  in  the  Derby  by  a  castaway  from  his  own  stable. 
There  are  no  hundred-guinea  sires  in  Arabia.  The  prizes  of  the  turf  and  sale-ring 
are  needed  for  that.  It  is  said  that  there  exist,  among  the  Bedouin,  primitive 
peoples  who  are  satisfied  with  a  lamb  as  stud-fee ;  but  wherever  we  have  been,  less 
Arcadian  payments  have  been  current — not  large  sums,  but  still  coin?  A  couple 
of  shillings  are  much  thought  of  by  those  who  buy  hardly  anything  beyond  dates 
and  bread-stuffs,  coffee  and  tobacco,  and,  when  the  opportunity  offers,  ammunition. 
The  Bedouin  Arab  is  one  of  those  who  think  little  fishes  sweet ;  and  as  no  limit  is 
set  to  the  number  of  mares  among  the  desert  horse-breeders,  and  a  colt's  powers 
may  be  called  on  while  he  is  still  a  yearling,  the  owner  of  an  approved  horse  makes 
up  for  the  smallness  by  the  frequency  of  his  receipts.  The  effect  of  this  on  the 
breed,  and  on  the  individual,  is  but  little  considered  by  the  Arabs ;  whose  opinion 
eoes  no  further  than  that  the  earlier  a  colt  begins  to  cover,  the  sooner  he  will  be 
a  horse !  One  consequence  of  every  celebrated  horse,  whether  young  or  old,  sound 
or  unsound,  thus  earning  a  little  income,  is  that  the  prices  which  are  asked  and 
obtained  in  the  desert  for  pedigree  animals  are  apt  to  run  high. 

In  regard  to  non- Bedouin  Arabia,  what  we  have  seen  is  this.  In  the  establish- 
ments of  the  great,  horses  mark  their  owner's  rank  and  wealth,  mount  the  followers, 
and  round  off  the  pomps  and  vanities.  In  the  sheds  of  the  humble,  they  reveal  the 
irresistible  bent  of  the  Arabs  to  tie  a  mare  beside  them,  however  limited  their  spaces 
may  be.  Mullas  praise  the  horse,  for  their  Prophet's  sake ;  travellers,  because  he 
carries  them  ;  cultivators,  because  he  promotes  their  husbandry ;  and  jam-bazes, 
because  the  means  of  subsistence  and  foundations  of  wealth  are  "in  his  forehead." 
In  a  word,  in  settled,  as  in  pastoral,  Arabia,  innumerable  endearing  associations  of 
war  and  love,  chase  and  journey,  toil  and  pleasure,  centre  in  him. 

'  Byron,  in  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers.  owner  of  a  horse  of  reputation  feels  that  he  can  hardly 


-  The  reader  will  understand   that  this   statement 
applies  exclusively  to  the  desert.      In  towns,   every 


refuse  his  services,  and  it  would  be  considered  a  shame 
to  receive  payment. 


\6-] 


CHAPTER    II. 

FOREIGN    ESTIMATES    OF    THE    ARABIAN.     . 

UP  to  this  point  we  have  been  chiefly  occupied  with  the  Arabian  Horse  in 
countries  where  he  is  regarded  as  the  work  and  gift  of  Allah,  which  neither 
needs  nor  admits  of  improvement.  But  the  time  has  arrived  to  consider  another 
series  of  facts.  The  same  breed  commands  almost  an  equal  degree  of  admiration 
wherever  it  is  known.  The  horse  of  nations  with  whom  the  world,  if  ever  it  was 
^^oung,  still  is  so,  and  for  whom  the  "long  results  of  time"  are  traditional  and  un- 
written, is  sought  out  by  the  most  civilised  Governments  for  the  improvement  of 
their  studs  and  the  expansion  of  their  empire  and  resources.  Several  of  the  greatest 
generals  of  modern  Europe  have  shown  a  strong  preference  for  Arab  horses  as 
chargers.  In  the  courtly  circles  of  Persia  and  India,  this  is  the  horse  which  is 
prized  above  all  others.  The  point  is,  what  do  these  familiar  facts  imply?  Is  the 
Arabian  abroad  a  genuine  good  thing  or  an  illusion  ?     Is  it  his  merits  that  have 

k:>  Q  o 

thus  distingtiished  him,  or  chiefly  his  oriental  associations,  and  the  circumstance  that 
no  one  knows  exactly  where  he  comes  from  ?  Such  are  the  questions  which  next 
await  us  ;  but  first,  it  may  be  well  to  notice  what  has  been  said  by  others,  both  in 
favour  of  the  Arabian  breed  and  in  depreciation  of  it. 

The  praises  of  Arabians  by  their  owners  which  occur  in  popular  books  require 
to  be  received  with  abatement.  Not  only  does  admiration  come  more  naturally 
than  fault-finding,  but  the  authors  of  such  passages  have  frequently  been  literary 
persons,  without  any  very  wide  experience  of  horses.  This  applies  to  one  of 
the  prettiest  and  most  frequently  quoted  references  of  the  class  alluded  to — that 
in  which,  in  his  Narrative  of  a  Journey  through  the  Upper  Provinces  of  India  In 
1824-5,  the  amiable  Bishop  Heber  commended  his  Arab  riding- horse. ^ 

No  ancient  or  modern  Church  can  bear  comparison  with  the  Church  of  England 

-  V.  1828  edition,  in  two  4to  vols.,  of  the  Bishop's  Narrative,  in  vol.  ii.  p.  319. 


i6S  GENERAL    VIEW  OF  THE  ARABIAN.  BOOK  iii. 

in  the  power  of  producing  excellent  preachers  and  parsons,  who  are  also  horsemen  ; 
but  the  author  of  "  From  Greenland's  icy  mountains  "  represented  a  different  phase 
of  clerical  life.  There  can  be  no  question  that,  for  one  whose  seat  is  not  well  down 
into  the  saddle,  the  Arabian  is  the  pleasantest  and  the  safest  of  all  the  chevaux  de 
hixe  of  the  world.  No  one  can  be  called  a  coachman  who  has  never  handled  rougher 
teams  than  gentlemen's  ones, — -never  worked  a  coach,  stage  after  stage,  and  grappled 
with  them  as  they  came — bolters,  bo -kickers,  and  all  sorts  of  reprobates.  And  neither 
should  one  whose  equestrian  experiences  have  been  confined  to  Arabs  make  too  sure 
that  he  is  a  horseman.  While  noting  this,  we  would  not  be  thought  to  suggest  that 
the  clientele  of  the  Arabian  is,  in  any  considerable  degree,  formed  of  men  who  are 
not  exactly  centaurs.  A  far  larger  class  of  his  admirers,  in  which  are  many  of  the 
strongest  riders  in  the  world,  consists  of  those  who,  when  they  are  in  the  saddle, 
have  other  things  to  think  of  than  horsebreaking.  An  adjutant-general  or  an  aide- 
de-camp,  whose  charger  is  given  to  "  sticking  up,"  as  it  is  called,  under  the  saddle, 
cannot  perform  his  duty.  We  know  as  well  as  any  one  that  Arabs  also  are  some- 
times difficult  to  ride.  Even  the  gentlest  have  their  little  ways,  especially  with  the 
timid  ;  and  we  have  known  a  few  which  would  give  any  man  an  uneasy  half  hour, 
when  it  was  inconvenient  to  treat  them  to  all  that  they  required  to  sober  them — • 
a  right  good  gallop.  But,  as  a  rule,  horses  of  this  breed,  when  asked  to  go  in  one 
direction,  do  not  insist  on  going  in  another  direction,  or  fix  themselves  on  their  fore- 
legs and  curl  up  like  hedgehogs.  Their  worst  tantrums,  compared,  for  example,  with 
the  sullen  humours  of  the  Australian  buck-jumper,  remind  us  of  the  "  Amaryllzdis 
iras."  If  one  or  two  of  the  many  splendid  Arabs  which  the  late  Emperor  of  the 
French  collected  had  been  reserved  for  his  ill-starred  son,  the  Prince  Imperial,  the 
fateful  moment  in  Zululand  would  not  have  found  him  struggling  with  his  charger. 

It  should  also  be  remembered  that,  ever  since  Great  Britain  took  charge  of  India, 
the  Arabian  horse  has  enjoyed  extraordinary  opportunities  of  shining  in  the  public 
service.  India  has  been  surveyed  and  settled,  not  by  the  Englishman  alone,  but  by 
the  Englishman  and  his  horse.  Important  divisions  of  its  cavalry  armament— notably 
the  Lancers  of  the  Nizam's  country  and  the  Central  India  Horse — obtain  a  large 
number  of  remounts  from  the  Arab  horse  -  marts  of  Bombay.  In  the  brief  but 
difficult  campaign  of  1856  in  Persia,  the  straight  swords  and  Arab  horses  of  the 
Bombay  Light  Cavalry  demoralised  the  Shah's  forces.  Chargers  from  the  Euphrates 
have  carried  our  soldiers  to  Candahar  and  Cabul,  to  Pekin  and  to  Magdala.  More 
recently,  in  Burma,  where  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  keep  foreign  horses  healthy,  the 
cavalry  of  the  Hyderabad  Contingent  added  to  the  high  reputation  which  it  Inherits.^ 

1  An  officer  of  the  3d  Lancers,  Hyderabad  Contin-     ,     out  a  single  sore  baclc,  and  witli  but  one  or  two  slight 
gent,  informs  us  that  in  Burma  ninety  of  his  men  kept  girth-galls." 

constantly  on  the  move  for  nearly  three  months  "  with-     '  ' 


CHAP.  II.  FOREIGN  ESTIMATES   OF   THE  ARABIAN.  169 

It  would  have  been  surprising  if,  in  these  and  other  ways,  sentiments  of  admir- 
ation for  Arab  horses  had  not  been  produced   in  Englishmen.     We   all   hold  by 
what  has  served  us.     We  may  not  treat  or  reward  it  properly,  but  at  least  we  try 
to  keep  it.     A  general  officer  who  is  appointed  to  command  an  expedition  forms  his 
staff,  as  far  as  possible,  of  men  who  are  known  to  him,  and  delights  In  seeing  his 
batteries    and    regiments   led   by  old  comrades.       An  amusing   illustration   of  the 
length  to  which    this  feeling  may  be    carried  was   afforded    by  Horace  Walpole, 
who  believed  so  firmly  in  James's  powder  as  to  declare  that,  if  ever  his  house  was 
on  fire,  his  first  act  would  be  to  take  a  dose  of  it !     A  passion  for  Arab  horses  is  not 
like  that ;  but  when  it  leads  an  Englishman  to  paint  his  Arab  in  colours  lent  by 
his  imagination — or  if,  by  chance,  he  possess  a  phoenix,  to  write  as  if  the  whole 
breed  resembled  him — then,  "  Save  me  from  my  friends  !"  may  well  be  said  for  the 
Arabian.     The  principle  of  reaction,  a  great  safeguard  of  moderation,  at  once  comes 
into  play.     When  Mr  Blunt  went  to   Newmarket,  "  to  preach,"  as  he  relates,  "  at 
headquarters  the  new  gospel  of  Arabia  to  the  elders  of  the  sporting  world,"  a  fine  old 
Trojan  confided  to  him  that,  if  the  Arab  horse  "  had  any  merit,  he  had  got  it  from 
certain  thoroughbred  sires  imported  to  Arabia  by  Newmarket  sportsmen  at  the  time 
of  the  Crusades."  ^      It  Is  not  every  one  who  has  the  wit  thus  to  turn  the  tables  on 
an  opponent.      But  many  an  Englishman  considers  that,  however  suitable  the  Arab 
steed  may  be  to  the  half-famished  Bedouin,  he  will  sooner  or  later  break  the  neck 
of  the  well-fed  European  ;  and  that  his  value  appears  truly.  If  dolefully,  at  Tatter- 
sail's,  when  a  horse  which  may  have  cost  a  thousand  guineas  fetches  perhaps  about 
the  same  number  of  shillings  !     The  mention  of  Tattersall's  brinofs  before  us  what  a 
despiser  of  Arabs  the  late  Mr  Richard  Tattersall  was.     When  the  Najdi  horse  above 
referred  to  as  taken  from  the  Wahabis  arrived  in  London,  he  would  not  even  go  to 
look  at  him.     Nevertheless,  on  accidentally  meeting  him,  the  old  man  had  to  declare 
that  he  was  "  the  finest  blood-horse  of  the  size  he  had  ever  seen."  -     Saul  amono- 
the  prophets !     The  diversity  of  opinion  which  prevails  among  practical  horsemen 
on  the  subject  of  the  Arabian  will  be  apparent  if  we  here  insert  the  two  following 
extracts.     The  first  Is  from  Sidney's  Book  of  the  Horse  ;  and  Mr  Sidney  Informs 
his  readers  that  the  writer  of  It  is  "  one  who  has  been  engaged  In  dealing  in  the  best 
class  of  horses  all  his  life — who  has  bred  horses,  trained  them,  ridden  them  on  the 
road.  In  the  field,  and  over  the  steeplechase  course  ;  driven,  bought,  and  sold  them  ; 
who  is  as  much  at  home  in  the  horse-world  of  Spain  and  France  as  of  England." 
This  expert  states  his  view  of  the  case  as  follows  : —  ■ 


1  op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  14,  p.  755. 
-  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  25,  p.  153,  where  also  a 
famous  hunting  man  and  breeder  of  horses  says  of 


Dervish  that  "  he  had  the  most  beautiful  darting  action 
that  I  ever  saw  in  his  trot — the  knee  quite  straight 
long  before  the  foot  touched  the  <? round.'' 


I70  GENERAL    VIEW  OF  THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

"Do  I  like  Arabs?  No.  In  my  opinion  they  have  not  one  point  to  recommend  them  for 
use  in  England  in  which  they  are  not  excelled  by  our  own  thoroughbreds.  They  are,  with 
very  rare  exceptions,  very  bad  hacks  ;  they  cannot  walk  without  stumbling — in  fact,  they  are 
always  stumbling  ;  they  have  no  true  action  in  either  trot  or  canter ;  they  are  slow  in  their 
gallop,  as  compared  with  any  well-bred  English  blood-horse.  They  are  too  small  for  hunting, 
or  for  first-class  harness  ;  and  cannot  race  with  common  English  platers.  All  I  ever  saw  were 
so  formed,  with  the  croup  higher  than  the  withers,  that  they  rode  doivn  hill. 

"  When  I  was  living  in  Spain,  a  very  great  personage,  for  whom  I  had  procured  some 
high-class  Spanish  parade-horses,  presented  me  with  two  Arabs  of  the  highest  caste — 
purchased  without  limit  as  to  price,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Damascus — a  black  and  a  grey. 
They  were  as  handsome  at  first  sight  as  any  picture  of  Arabs  that  I  ever  saw  ;  about  14  hands 
3  inches  high  ;  very  temperate  to  ride,  with  great  power  in  their  hind-quarters  ;  but  wanting 
that  slope  in  the  shoulders,  and  that  proportionate  length,  breadth,  and  power  in  motion  which 
are  essential  to  make  first-class  riding  action. 

"  I  was  living  in  Spain  at  that  time,  and  had  English  thoroughbreds  and  half-breds, 
Spanish  mares  of  the  carnet'o  or  Don  Carlos  breed,  half-breds  between  the  English  blood- 
horse  '  Kedger '  (by  Colonel  Anson's  '  Sheet  Anchor ')  and  Spanish  mares.  These  Arabs, 
which  had  cost,  perhaps,  not  counting  political  influence,  ;£'iooo  a-piece,  were  inferior  in  hack- 
action,  and  as  hacks,  to  English  or  Spanish  horses  of  one-tenth  the  cost.  I  rode  the  grey 
with  a  pack  of  harriers  I  kept ;  he  was  an  unpleasant  hack,  and  no  hunter.  I  trained  them 
both,  and  they  were  distanced  by  horses  bred  out  of  Spanish  mares  by  my  English  blood- 
horse  ;  finally,  I  put  them  to  the  stud,  and  their  produce  out  of  some  twenty  of  my  best 
Spanish  mares  were  inferior  in  size,  early  maturity,  and  market  value  to  the  stock  of  my 
blood-horse. 

"  To  sum  up,  Arabs  are  very  bad  hacks.  They  are  too  small  for  hunters  even  where, 
exceptionally,  they  have  hunting  conformation  ;  too  small  and  too  devoid  of  elegant  action 
for  harness  ;  and  too  slow  for  race-horses ;  as  sires,  they  are  inferior  to  the  English  blood- 
horses  of  power  and  symmetry  which  are  to  be  purchased,  when  too  slow  for  racing,  at  a  less 
price  than  a  high-caste  Arab. 

"  The  one  quality  in  which  Arabs  excel,  endurance,  and  which  they  share  with  Australian 
horses  and  Indian  mustangs,  is  not  required  in  civilised  states,  where  travelling  is  either 
performed  by  railways  or  post-horses."  ^ 

As  a  weight  for  the  opposite  scale,  the  reader  may  take  the  following  outburst 
of  philo-Arabism,  not  by  an  Eastern  veteran,  but  by  a  horseman  at  the  Antipodes, 
whose  book,  Ptt,re  Saddle-Horses,  has  already  been  laid  under  contribution  :  ^ — 

"About  ten  years  ago,"  says  Mr  Curr,  "  I  had  many  opportunities  of  seeing  Arab  horses 
in  Syria,  Turkey,  the  Holy  Land,  and  Egypt ;  and  before  I  saw  them,  I  had  already  had  some 
experience  of  the  horses  of  England,  France,  and  Spain,  besides  those  of  Australia  and 
Tasmania ;  in  none  of  which  countries  I  had  resided  less  than  a  year.  I  had  also  seen  those 
of  Greece,  Italy,  Flanders,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  Turkey,  and  other  places  too  numerous  to 
mention  ;  so  that  I  may  be  said  to  have  approached  the  examination  of  the  Arab  after  having 
seen  most  of  the  best  breeds  in  existence.  ...  In  all  these  countries  I  have  ridden  more  or 


A  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  25,  p.  145.  |  ^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  39,  pp.  123-130. 


CHAP.  II.  FOREIGN  ESTIMATES    OF   THE   ARABIAN.  171 

less;  and  had  originally  in  Tasmania  and  Australia  been  so  unceasingly  in  the  saddle,  that  it 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  I  acquired  a  habit  of  glancing  my  eye  over  every  horse  that  came 
in  my  way,  and  involuntarily  daguerreotyping  his  figure  upon  my  memory.  .   .  . 

"  Of  Arab  horses,  though  I  have  seen  many  belonging  to  Pashas  and  royal  personages,  to 
rich  men  and  wandering  Bedouins,  I  am  not  sure  that  I  have  ever  seen  one  of  the  most 
esteemed  castes.  But,  if  not,  I  have  seen  many  that  had  been  purchased  at  respectable  prices, 
seen  many  of  them  at  work,  and  ridden  a  few  of  them.  A  gardener  soon  forms  an  opinion  of 
a  spade,  and  a  woodcutter  of  an  axe  ;  and  so,  one  who  has  lived  in  the  saddle  soon  makes  up 
his  mind  about  horses.  Mine,  at  all  events,  was  not  long  in  being  satisfied.  Instead  of  seeing 
anything  to  object  to  in  the  Arab  as  a  saddle-horse — his  size  excepted — all  that  I  did  see,  and 
all  that  I  was  enabled  to  glean  concerning  him  in  his  native  land,  only  led  me  the  more 
decidedly  to  endorse  the  opinions  of  those  numberless  very  competent  judges  who  had  gone 
before  me.  I  never  met  a  man  who  had  tried  him  and  did  not  like  him.  I  found  him  in 
speed  inferior  to  the  horse  of  England  ;  but  in  tractability,  constitution,  durability,  soundness, 
abstemiousness,  temper,  courage,  and  instinct,  eclipsing  and  surpassing  all  other  horses  that  it 
has  been  my  chance  to  meet  with.  In  that  quality  so  pleasing  to  the  horseman,  sagacity, 
I  think  he  has  no  equal.  Even  half-breeds  sprung  from  him  are  remarkable  in  this  point. 
When  in  Syria,  1  bought  a  little  horse  which  was  no  beauty,  but  had  evidently  got  a  good  deal 
of  Arab  blood  in  him.  He  stood  14.2,  and  was  six  years  off.  I  had  him  about  three  months, 
and  rode  him  perhaps  a  thousand  miles.  He  was  never  fed  more  than  twice  a-day  under  any 
circumstances.  At  sunrise  his  breakfast,  which  consisted  of  two  double  handfuls  of  barley,  was 
given  to  him  in  his  nose-bag.  .  .  .  Two  hours  after  this,  he  was  allowed  about  four  quarts  of 
water.  Three  hours  before  sun-down  he  was  taken  to  water,  and  allowed  to  drink  his  fill.  Two 
hours  later  ten  double  handfuls  of  barley,  sometimes  mixed  with  three  or  four  handfuls  of 
chaff,  were  given  to  him.  Such  were  the  habits  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up ;  and  such 
the  amount  of  food  which  proved  in  every  way  sufficient  for  him,  even  when  at  work.  .  .  .  On 
this  he  looked  as  round  as  if  he  had  eaten  as  much  as  our  Australian  horses  are  accustomed  to 
do.  For  twenty  days  I  rode  him  thirty  miles  a-day.  He  had  15  stone  on  his  back — the 
country  was  mountainous  and  rocky,  but  he  never  made  a  false  step,  and  I  think  he  improved 
in  condition.     I  never  remember  to  have  found  him  weary. 

"  His  intelligence  was  quite  beyond  any  single  instance  I  have  ever  witnessed  in  an 
Australian  horse.  To  say  that  he  recognised  his  master,  as  one  man  does  another,  would 
hardly  be  doing  justice  to  his  sagacity ;  he  rather  seemed  to  recognise  me  as  the  detective  does 
his  man,  If,  as  was  sometimes  the  case,  he  was  in  a  stable  with  a  hundred  others,  where  many 
persons  would  be  constantly  passing  to  and  fro  at  all  hours,  he  seemed  to  be  constantly  on  the 
watch  for  me.  My  voice,  of  course,  he  knew  at  once.  The  sound  of  my  footsteps  seemed  as 
familiar  to  his  ear  as  was  my  appearance  to  his  eye.  He  would  greet  me  with  his  voice  when 
I  was  several  hundred  yards  from  my  tent. 

"  Such  is  the  Arabian  horse.  ...  I  do  not  know  where  you  will  have  to  go  to  find  such 
another !  Such  he  is  now,  and  if  we  may  trust  the  accounts  of  old  travellers,  such  he  has  long 
been  ;  .  .  .  and  whilst  we  remember  that  he  wants  but  two  inches  in  height  to  be  the  perfection 
of  horse-flesh  (which  want  I  firmly  believe  more  plentiful  food  would  radically  supply  in  three 
generations),  let  us  not  forget  his  renown  as  a  sire,  his  sure-footedness,  docility,  beauty,  speed, 
abstemiousness,  stoutness,  and  courage — where  shall  we  find  his  peer .'  All  honour  to  the 
little  horse  ! 

"  Who  will  contradict  me  when  I  assert  that  no  breed  of  saddle-horses  has  shone  which 


172  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

has  not  possessed  some  strain  of  Arab  blood  ?     Who  will  show  me  that  I  am  incorrect  when  I 
say  that  the  virtues  of  European  breeds  are  in  exact  relation  to  their  affinity  to  the  Arab  ! 
"Who  that  has  known  the  Arab  has  not  preferred  him  to  all  other  horses?" 

The  above  two  extracts  may  be  said  to  represent  the  proverbial  two  sides  of 
the  shield.  Our  next  undertaking  will  be  to  bring  before  the  reader  facts  which 
may  serve  to  illustrate  those  two  sides  respectively.  But  before  entering  on  this 
task,  let  us  plainly  state  that  neither  the  one  extreme  nor  the  other  will  be  upheld 
in  the  following  pages.  If  a  writer's  qualifications  fail  to  appear  as  he  proceeds, 
his  own  recital  of  them  will  not  avail  him.  Nevertheless,  in  here  hazarding  the 
opinion  that  the  superiority  of  the  Arabian  branch  of  the  family  has  been  too  much 
insisted  on,  our  claim  to  practical  experience  may  be  stated.  The  author  has 
spent  the  best  hours  of  a  long  life  in  the  saddle  or  on  the  coach-box.  If  all  the 
Arabs  which  he  has  owned  were  to  be  paraded  on  the  "  further  shore,"  a  very  respect- 
able front  rank  and  rear  rank  would  be  formed.  He  has  marched,  on  horses  of 
different  breeds,  from  Annesley  Bay  to  Magdala,  and  from  Peshawar  to  Cabul,  as 
well  as  over  large  parts  of  India,  Persia,  and  Arabia ;  having  also  for  several  years 
been  adjutant  of  a  cavalry  regiment  mounted  on  Arabs.  If  he  had  not  found 
many  sterling  qualities  in  the  Arabian,  he  would  not  have  grown  so  attached  to 
him  ;  but  that  is  a  different  thing  from  setting  him  on  too  high  a  pedestal.  During 
the  same  period  he  has  also  owned  many  English  and  Australian  horses.  The 
result  has  been  the  conclusion  just  broadly  stated  ;  and  it  is  proposed  in  the  next 
two  chapters  to  explain  the  grounds  thereof. 


173 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE    ARABIAN    COMPARED    WITH    OTHER    VARIETIES,    IN    RESPECT    OF 

CONSTITUTION    AND    CHARACTER. 

IT  will  facilitate  the  treatment  of  this  subject  if  we  deal  with  all  the  points 
in  regard  to  which  the  Australian  writer  awards  superiority  to  the  Arabian. 
These  points  comprise,  it  will  be  noticed,  every  endowment,  with  the  sole  exception 
of  racing  speed,  on  which  the  horse's  credit  depends.  They  are — tractability,  con- 
stitution, durability,  soundness,  abstemiousness,  temper,  courage,  instinct,  and  saga- 
city ;  a  goodly  group,  which,  for  the  sake  of  making  a  division,  may  be  classified  as 
bodily  properties,  or  constitiUion  ;  and  mental  qualities,  or  character. 


Constitution. 

This  term  is  here   used  to   express   every  quality  which   either  helps   to   con- 
stitute,  or  is   intimately  connected  with,   soundness. 

The  fallacy  of  applying  the  epithet  natziral,  as  opposed  to  artificial,  to  the 
strains  of  the  desert,  has  already  appeared.  In  no  other  breed  of  horses  is  repro- 
duction more  effectually  controlled  and  guarded  by  man  than  in  the  Arabian.  The 
Arabs  have  no  paddocks  in  which  stud  accidents  may  hajDpen.  The  horse  of 
unknown  or  unapproved  pedigree  which  grows  up  among  the  desert  folk, 
from  never  being-  allowed  to  cover,  takes  but  little  notice  of  the  mares  beside 
him.  The  stallions  in  use  are  kept  so  securely  shackled,  that  stolen  leaps 
are  next  to  impossible.  In  this  and  other  respects,  the  Arabian  breed  is 
broadly  separated  from  purely  natural  races.  But  there  are  gradations  in  every- 
thing ;  and  an  unstabled  variety,  the  native  of  a  hot  and  dry  climate,  undoubtedly 
is  more  a  product  of  nature  than  the  horse  of  cold  and  rainy  latitudes,  which  has 
been  housed,  and  pampered,  and  physicked  for  many  generations.  As  might  be 
expected,  both  the  respiratory  and  digestive  organs  are  healthier  in  Asiatic  than  in 


174  GENERAL    VIEW   OF    THE   ARABIAN.  BOOK  III. 

European  breeds.     Eastern  horses  admit  of  comparison  witli  our  Welsli  and  Exmoor 
ponies  in  this  respect.     The  observation  of  ages  jDoints  to  hereditary  predisposition 
as  a  factor  in  many  diseases.      The  proof  of  this  is  rendered  difficult  in  the  human 
species  by  the  action  of  modifying  circumstances.     When  a  bon  vivant  who  loves 
fruity  wines  and  French  cookery  declares  that  he  has  inherited  gout  from  his  grand- 
father, it  is  open  to  doubt  whether  his  clief  and  butler  have  not  more  to  do  with  it 
than  his  deceased  ancestor.     We  know  a  lady  who  believes  that  a  certain  "church- 
yard cough,"  as  she  terms  it,  "  runs  in  her  family  ;  "  while  the  truth  is,  that,  like  her 
mother  before  her,  she  is  foolish  enough  to  be  fond  of  an  "airing"  in  an  open  car- 
riage without  sufficient  covering.     But  in  the  lower  animals,  there  is  less  difficulty 
in  distinguishing  between  acquired  and  inherited  unsoundness  ;    and  no  practical 
man  hesitates  to  affirm  that,  in  respect  of  health   and  disease,  as  in  so  many  other 
ways,  the  horse  and  mare  live  again  in  their  progeny.      It  does   not,  however,  follow 
that  because  the   Arabian  generally  begins  life  with  a  good,  sound,  open-air  con- 
stitution, he  invariably  maintains  a  clear  health-sheet.      Neglect,  or  mismanagement, 
particularly  after  hard   riding,   is   apt  to  give  him   colic,   which   may  subsequently 
recur  from  slighter  causes.      Coughs  are  perhaps   even   more   frequent,  though  less 
hurtful,  in   eastern   than   in  western   horses.      The  Arabs  say  that  it   is   lucky  when 
the  mare  coughs,  and  the  reverse  when  the  riding-camel  does  so.      Even  when  the 
cough  is  in  the  air-passages,  permanent  changes  in  the  vocal  chords  rarely  result 
from  it.      Wheezing,  whistling,  piping,  roaring,  are  far  from  common  sounds  under 
the  clear  skies  which  are  east  of  the   Mediterranean.     The  only  Arab  "roarer" 
ever  seen  by  us   was  a  beautiful   little   horse  which,   owing  to  this  infirmity,  was 
unplaced  every  time  he  started  on  the  turf.      Professional  opinion  differed  as  to  the 
cause.       He  was   known  to   have  been   much   used    at    stud   in  his   own   country ; 
and   it  was  conjectured  that  this  might  have  affected  him,   as  dram-drinking  may 
affect  the  human   larynx.       But    more    probably  the  evil   originated   in    the    over- 
stabling  and   over-feeding  to   which  he  was  treated,   directly  after  exchanging  his 
own  dry  climate  for  the  chilly  Indian   Deccan.      Another  colt  which  came  with  him 
contracted  a  cough  that  lasted  till  he  died  many  years  afterwards, — a  stomach  cough, 
possibly,    seeing  that  it  never  did  him  any  harm,   but  one  with  an  extraordinary 
power  of  defeating  the  doctors.      When  he  was  picketed  in  the  open  the  cough 
would  leave  him,  but  it  always  came  back  when  he  was  re-stabled.     Here  it  should 
be  mentioned  that  those  who  take  their  ideas  of  the  Arabian's  soundness  exclusively 
from  what  is  seen  of  him  in  India,  do  not  know  the  whole  truth.     As  a  rule,  there 
is  no  better  market  than  the  home  one  for  English   horses.     One  that  can  both 
gallop  and  stay  for  two  miles  will  fetch  more  money  in  Yorkshire  than  in  Bengal. 
There  never  were  so  many  races  in  England  as  now  in  which  bad  performers  can  be 
skilfully  placed  ;  and  as  numbers  of  our  countrymen,  honest  fellows,  would  rather 


CHAP.  III.      THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITEI  OTHER    VARIETIES. 


175 


win  money  with  a  wretch  at  some  obscure  meeting,  than  lose  it  with  a  flyer  at 
Epsom  or  Doncaster,  a  jade  not  worth  its  freight  to  a  foreign  port  may  excite  keen 
competition  at  home.  Abroad,  the  case  is  different.  Except  on  rare  occasions,  no 
such  prices  are  paid  for  Arabs  in  Arabia  as  those  which  prevail,  for  instance,  in 
India  ;  and  this  affords  a  fine  field  to  the  exporters.  The  disappointments  which 
these  men  suffer  when  one  after  another  of  their  selections  is  sent  before  an  Enorlish 
veterinary  surgeon  in  Bombay,  only  to  be  rejected  for  some  defect  unheard  of  by 
their  great-gi'andfathers,  produce  a  salutary  effect  on  them.  At  first  they  blame 
themselves  for  not  having  offered  a  bakhshish  to  the  "  dochtor,"  as  they  call  him; 
but  gradually  they  discover  that  their  best  policy  is  to  look  for  sound  horses. 
Experiences  which  touch  the  pocket  go  home  to  every  one.  The  tribes  of  Arabia 
also,  on  perceiving  that  the  buyers  who  visit  them  object  to  certain  defects,  try  to 
keep  their  rising  colts  as  right  as  possible. 

Returning  from  this  slight  excursion,  let  us  search  a  little  into  the  subject  of 
the  Arabian's  lamenesses,  beginning  with  spavine.  This  disease, — for  a  disease  it 
truly  is, — though  recognised  for  at  least  two  thousand  years  in  Europe,  and  bearing 
a  name  in  many  Eastern  vocabularies,^  is  unknown  to  the  Bedouin,  except  at  second 
hand,  through  soldiers,  farriers,  and  jam-bazes.  The  natural  consequence  of  this  is 
that,  from  time  immemorial,  horses  and  mares  having  unsound  hocks  have  been 
freely  intermated  in  the  Arabian  desert.  Principal  Vet.  Surg.  Collins,  in  a  paper 
read  by  him  in  1878  before  the  United  Service  Institution  of  India,  cites  an  instance 
in  which  a  mare  whose  off  fore-cannon  bone  had  been  accidentally  broken,  trans- 
mitted crooked  fore-legs  not  only  to  her  first  foal,  but,  more  or  less,  to  every  sub- 
sequent foal.  But  the  Arabs  still  have  much  to  learn  on  subjects  of  this  class. 
They  do  not  know  that  certain  conformations  of  the  hock  favour  the  development 
of  spavine,  and  that,  apart  from  the  question  of  whether  there  exist  in  horses  taints 
akin  to  scrofula  in  man,  having  for  one  of  their  expressions  the  production  of  mis- 
chief in  bone,  ligament,  and  cartilage,  unsoundnesses  of  the  hock-joint,  even  when 
due  to  accident,  may  reappear  congenitally.  Their  ignorance  of  these  matters  should 
prevent  us  from  wondering  at  the  prevalence  of  spavine  in  their  horses.  Many  years 
ago  we  sent  an  Indian  cavalry  soldier  to  Sha-mi-ya  to  buy  pedigree  Arabians,  and 
of  the  three  which  he  brought  back,  two  were  spavined.  More  recently,  while 
residing  at  Baghdad,  we  commissioned  a  dealer  of  Ku-wait  to  enter  Najd  and  buy 
a  few  Arabs,  or  even  one,  of  the  class  described  by  Palgrave  in  his  book,^  in  which 
we  then  believed.  The  best  of  his  selections  was  a  desert  celebrity,  of  many  j^ears' 
standing,  with  a  large  bone-spavine.      Every  year  a  considerable  number  of  that 


1  In  Northern  India,  spavine  is  called  chap-ia;  and 
in  Afghanistan,  chak-ka. 


Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  7,  ch.  xii. 


176  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

horse's  stock  had  been  passing  into  the  Bombay  market.  This  reminds  us  of  how 
a  fine  old  original,  known  to  a  past  generation  of  sportsmen  as  Haj-ji  A'bdu  '1 
Wah-hab,  himself  a  Kurd,  but  the  importer  of  very  many  first-class  Arabians  into 
India,  used  to  declare  that  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a  spavine,  or  that  if  there 
were,  the  seat  of  it  was  "the  doctor's  eye."  It  is  true  that  veterinarians  fresh 
from  England,  who  do  not  understand  the  "  roughness,"  as  their  more  experienced 
brethren  term  it,  of  the  Arabian's  hocks,  may  see  spavines  merely  in  the  natural 
fulness  of  the  bony  projections.  But  knowledge  has  made  such  progress  in  the 
coffee-houses  of  the  town  Arabs  since  Haj-ji  A'bdu  '1  VVah-hab's  day,  that  the 
present  race  of  jam-bazes,  instead  of  disbelieving  in  spavine,  illustrate  the  Persian 
proverb  that  "one  who  has  been  stung  by  a  snake  shies  at  a  rope,"  or,  as  we  say, 
"  a  scalded  child  fears  cold  water,"  in  their  anxiety  not  to  overlook  it.  We 
have  seen  a  Mosul  dealer  use  a  magnifying-glass  to  help  him  to  compare  the  out- 
lines of  the  two  hocks,  in  a  horse  which  he  was  examining.  Baghdad  possesses  a 
family  of  jam-bazes,  the  blind  and  aged  father  of  which,  in  his  day  a  noted  buyer, 
is  always  asked,  in  doubtful  cases,  to  give  his  progeny  the  benefit  of  his  sense  of 
feeling.  Whether  the  patriarch's  palsied  palm  and  fingers  find  out  all  that  is 
expected  of  them  is  another  matter,  but  the  idea,  at  least,  is  excellent.  If  both 
hocks  present  to  the  touch  the  same  surfaces  and  inequalities,  then,  probably,  they 
are  perfect.^  Another  oriental  method  of  proving  a  hock  is  to  hold  up  the  limb 
in  a  flexed  state,  after  which,  if  the  horse  halt  on  it  when  it  is  set  down,  he  is 
pronounced  to  be  spavined.  But  before  the  cleverest  of  the  Arabs,  even  those 
who  travel  as  far  as  Bombay  or  Cairo,  can  really  know  their  horses'  hocks,  educa- 
tion will  have  to  be  introduced  among  them.  In  how  far  spavine  interferes  with 
usefulness  is  a  question  which  is  here  foreign  to  us.  Probably  no  two  spavines 
are  precisely  similar  in  origin,  situation,  extent,  and  consequences.  The  celebrated 
Arab  plater.  Red  Hazard,  won  many  races  while  stiff  from  spavine.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  spavined  horse  from  Najd  above  alluded  to,  after  galloping 
several  thousands  of  miles  under  our  \\  stone,  in  I'-rak,  without  failing,  and  subse- 
quently, in  India,  keeping  sound  in  the  dry  hot  months,  fell  so  lame  from  his 
spavine  in  the  rainy  season  that  he  could  scarcely  walk.  Climate  or  meteorological 
conditions  may  tell,  it  would  appear,  even  on  bony  exostosis. 

After  spavine,  one  naturally  speaks  of  that  other  disease  of  the  bony  frame- 
work, splint.     All   splints  are  not  the  same,  any.  more  than  all  spavines  are.     A 


1  The  hand  and  the  ear  are  as  important  witnesses  with  the  other.     The  late   Professor  Dick  of  Edin- 


as  the  eye  when  a  horse  is  being  examined.  Once,  at 
a  fair  in  Northumberland,  a  blind  gipsy  was  the  first 
to  discover  that  a  horse  was  blind,  from  no  sudden 
flutter  occurring  in  the  heart's  action  when  one  hand 
was  laid  on  it,  and  a  feint  was  made  of  hitting  him 


burgh,  Avhen  seated  in  his  room  in  the  Veterinary 
College,  could  often  tell  by  the  ear  alone,  on  a  horse 
being  trotted  past  in  the  street  below,  not  only  whether 
he  was  sound  or  lame,  but,  if  the  latter,  the  peccant 
limb,  and  perhaps  the  cause  of  unsoundness. 


CHAP.  III.     THE   ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH  OTHER    VARIETIES.  177 

splint  close   to  the  knee, — the  osselet  of  the   old  farriers, — may,  or  may  not,   be 
perceived  by  the  Arabs,  but  one  which  is  lower  down  is  more  apparent.      From 
Mosul   to    Bussorah,   one   may  hear  splint  called   adhimis  sabk — i.e.,  the  bone  of 
outstripping,  or  bone  of  speed ;  but  there  is  no  authority  for  this  ridiculous  term. 
Some  wag  of  a  jam-baz  must  have  invented  it,  as  part  of  a  theory  that  a  horse  with 
a  splint,  or  splints,   is  more  valuable  than  he  would  be  if  he  were  sound  !^     No 
doubt,  in  a  horse  of  six  years  old  and  upwards,  whose  history  is  unknown,  it  is 
satisfactory  that  his  fore-legs  should  exhibit  symptoms  that  he  has  been  used  ;  but 
such  symptoms  should  not  be  those  of  actual  disease  :  and,  moreover,  idleness,  not 
less  than  work,  may  be  the  "  mother  of  splint."     That  is,  when  a  horse  has  been 
too  long  in  the  stable,  an  awkward  gambol  may  set  up  inflammation  in  the  soft 
material  which  is  placed,  for  a  useful  purpose,  between  the  splint  bones  and  the 
cannon,  and  the  result  may  be  the  conversion  of  part  of  it  into  bone.     The  chief 
cause  of  splint — namely,   concussion  in  galloping — is,    of  course,   highly  operative 
in  the  Arabian   desert  ;    but  there  are   special   causes,   such  as  the  friction  of  the 
iron  shackles,  and  the  interference  of  one  limb  with  the  other.^     "Splints  seldom 
hurt,"  writes  Mr   Day  in   The  Race-Horse  in   Training;   and  similarly   "Nimrod" 
stated,  in    The    Veterinarian^   that  he  had    "suffered   very   little  from   splint,   and 
never  remembered  but  one  horse  out  of  work  from  that  cause."     Mr  Percival  takes 
the  same  view   in  his  Hippopathology.      "  The  old  notion,"    he  observes,    "  is   still 
very  prevalent  among  unprofessional  people,    that  splints  often  lame  horses."      It 
is  maintained  by  him  that  "splint  rarely  produces  lameness."*     We  dare  say  not, 
in  England,  where  a  tendency  to  throw  out  bony  deposits  is  held  more  or  less  to 
disqualify  for  the  stud,  and  where,  from  the  first  hour  of  a  splint's  history,  careful 
notice  is  bestowed  on  it.      But  speaking  of  the  horses  which  are  bred  and  reared 
by  the  Arabs,  we  can  only  say  that  no  unsoundness  has  caused  us  more  disappoint- 
ment than  bone  disease  of  old  standing  between  the  knee  and  the  fetlock  joints. 
Especially  when  the  bony  knot  has  been  situated  too  near  either  end  of  the  cannon, 
or  on  its  posterior  margin,  it  has  proved  apt  to  form  a  centre  of  inflammation  and 
disturbance  after  fast  work.      Judging  from  the  fact  that  the  jam-bazes  will   not 
buy  a  horse  with  a  splint  unless  they  can  get  him  very  cheap,  this  defect  must 
be  pretty  generally  objected  to   in  foreign  markets. 


1  We  have  never  heard  the  Bad-u  call  a  splint  adhniic 
'j  sabk.  In  the  tents  of  Sha-mi-ya,  they  say  nii- 
shash,  a  slight  lengthening  of  the  old  Arabic  word 
ma-shash,  for  which  there  is  the  classical  authority 
of  a  verse  of  Al  A'sha. 

2  Once,  at  Baghdad,  a  flighty  Arab  with  turned-out 
toes  hit  one  leg  with  the  other  towards  the  middle  of 
the  shank.  A  bony  tumour  almost  immediately  ap- 
peared, without  lameness.     This  was  treated  for  about 


a  year,  but  it  only  grew  larger.  About  the  same  time 
another  Arab,  aged,  straight-limbed,  and  a  good  hack, 
chanced  to  throw  out  a  splint.  This  sphnt,  being  but 
small,  was  left  alone,  and  one  day  the  horse  knocked 
it  clean  off  with  the  opposite  fore-foot,  as  neatly  as 
with  a  chisel. 

3  Vol.  X.  p.  64. 

*  Vol.  iv.  p.  258. 


178  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

Ringbone^  is  much  less  common  in  well-bred  Arab  horses  than  in  the  large 
and  fleshy  legged  breeds  which  are  devoted  to  agriculture.  The  short  and  upright 
pasterns  which  invite  it  should  be  avoided,  and  the  tyro  must  be  careful  not  to 
mistake  harmless  rope-marks  for  it. 

Passing  from  the  bones  to  the  tendons,  ctirb,  or  curve,  is  the  only  unsound- 
ness in  regard  to  which  any  special  features  occur  in  the  Arabian  breed.  It  is  well 
known  that  horses  in  which  the  hocks  are  of  a  certain  shape  are  predisposed  to 
curb.  It  further  deserves  wide  publication  that  this  class  of  hock,  the  "curby"  or 
"  sickle "  hock,  as  it  is  termed,  is  so  uncommon  in  Arab  horses,  that  we  com- 
paratively seldom  see  in  them  the  strain  or  injury  of  the  sinew  at  the  back  of  the 
hind-leg,  below  the  hock-joint,  which  is  called  a  curb.  In  1876-77  we  revisited 
England  after  a  long  absence,  and  one  of  the  things  that  struck  us  was  what  a 
great  start  had  been  made  in  the  United  Kingdom  towards  breeding  out  those 
curby  hocks,  crooked  fore-legs,  and  eye-diseases,  which  have  come  down  as 
heirlooms  from  the  days  when  horse-breeding  was  a  lottery.  Agricultural  shows 
and  the  rejection  of  unsound  animals  had  begun  to  connect  the  breeder's  art  with 
science.  Perseverance  on  the  same  lines  is  perhaps  all  that  is  necessary  for  the 
attainment  of  perfection.  We  do  not  presume  to  say  that  foreign  blood  is  wanted. 
Nevertheless  in  districts  where  bent  hocks,  combined  with  smallness  of  bone 
immediately  below  the  hock  -joint,  are  prevalent,  the  introduction  of  approved 
Arabian  stallions  for  the  use  of  the  farmers  would  probably  be  found   beneficial. 

In  pursuing  our  inquiry  into  the  comparative  soundness  of  the  Arabian  and 
other  breeds,  we  next  come  to  the  Foot.  The  Arabs  appropriately  term  all  the 
parts  of  a  horse  from  the  knee  downward  his  a-sds,  or  fotmdatioiis ;  the  basis  of 
which,  of  course,  is  the  foot.  Different  soils,  we  all  know,  produce  different  shapes 
and  kinds  of  hoof.  The  ideal  foot  in  the  Arabian  breed  is  that  which  strikes  fire  "- 
from  the  rocky  sides  of  Ja-bal  Tu-waik,  in  Najd.  But  there  are  Arabian  dis- 
tricts, such  as  the  lower  Euphrates  mud-flat,  in  which  feet  of  the  opposite  or  spread- 
out  pattern,  often  accompanied  by  very  indifferent  action,  are  prevalent.  Between 
those  two  extremes,  hoofs  of  many  different  forms  appear ;  and  the  primitive 
farriery  of  the  Arabs  is  also  a  very  great  factor.  The  shoer's  art  lies  outside  of 
our  proper  subject ;  but  there  are  certain  facts  connected  with  it,  as  it  is  practised 
by  the  Arabs,  which  it  may  be  as  well  to  mention. 

On  the  one  hand,  life  in  the  open,  the  absence  of  roads  and  of  road  work, 
and  the  freedom  of  motion  which  the  mares  and  young  stock  enjoy  even  at  their 
pickets,  are  very  favourable  circumstances.  On  the  other  hand,  Arab  shoeing 
certainly  does  not  tend  to  assist  nature. 

'-  Bd-sha  of  the  Turkish  farriers.  I  ^  Isa.  v.  28. 


CHAP.  III.     THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH   OTHER    VARIETIES.  179 

At  the  outset  a  fact  of  some  interest  has  to  be  noted,  and  that  is,  that  both 
the  nomadic  and  the  settled  Arabs,  equally  with  their  Turku-man,  Persian,  and 
Afo'han  neighbours,  are  strongly  impressed  with  the  necessity  of  shoeing  their 
horses.  An  Indian  horseman  of  the  old  school  once  observed  to  us  that  an  unshod 
horse  was  no  better  than  a  donkey,  while  a  shod  one  was  like  a  lion ;  and  evidently 
the  Arabs  are  of  the  same  opinion.  It  is  true  that  very  many  unshod  mares,  and 
very  many  whose  shoes  have  been  left  on,  without  a  remove,  for  several  months, 
may  be  seen  in  the  Bedouin  nations ;  but  this  is  merely  a  feature  of  the  general 
deficiency  which  characterises  these  people.  Metal,  as  has  elsewhere  been  noticed, 
is  scarce  in  the  desert ;  and  the  Arabs  do  not  know  how  to  use  horn  as  a  substitute 
for  it,  like  the  Icelanders.  No  Arab  of  the  desert  will  handle  farrier's  tools,  or 
marry  his  daughter  to  one  who  does  so  ;  and  the  inferior  people  who  attach  them- 
selves to  the  tent-cities  as  shoeing-smiths  are  often  absent.  None  the  less,  the 
shoeing  of  the  mares  is  reckoned  a  most  important  preparation  for  Al  Ghaz-u.  We 
know  that  the  ancient  Arabs,  in  passing  over  very  rough  ground,  protected  their 
horses'  hoofs  with  leather  thongs ;  ^  in  the  same  way  that,  in  similar  circumstances, 
they  still  protect  the  soles  of  the  riding-camel  with  a  leathern  ndl  or  sandal. 

The  only  horse-shoe  which  the  Arabs  use  is  of  the  pattern  on  the  following  page. 

A  glance  reveals  that  the  oriental  nal  is  no  mere  rim,  but  a  sheet  of  metal. 
Including  six  nails,  it  weighs  from  ten  to  twelve  ounces.  A  blacksmith  makes  it,  and 
a  farrier  buys  it  and  puts  it  on  cold.  Thus,  there  is  not  so  much  as  a  pretence  of 
fitting  the  shoe  to  the  foot.  The  farrier,  when  he  has  chosen  a  shoe,  proceeds  to 
cut  and  rasp  the  foot  before  him  as  if  it  were  a  piece  of  wood,  to  bring  it  more  or 
less  to  the  form  of  the  iron.  There  could  not  be  stronger  evidence  of  the  natural 
vigour  of  the  horse's  foot,  in  many  Eastern  countries,  than  its  power  of  adapting 
itself  to  this  treatment.  Even  in  the  most  sound-footed  European  horses  which 
possess  any  claim  to  speed  or  breeding,  but  a  small  percentage,  we  rather  think, 
could  bear  such  shoeing.  If  the  iron  plate  were  to  be  put  on  tightly,  with  the 
nails  close  together  and  brought  out  high  up  the  crust,  lameness  would  follow.  If  it 
were  to  be  lightly  tacked  on,  it  would  soon  fall  off  The  shoe  of  our  illustration 
has  this  in  its  favour,  that  it  tends  to  give  the  horse  a  bearing  on  his  whole  foot, 
and  not  only,  or  mainly,  on  his  toe ;  but  the  process  of  preparing  the  under  surface 
of  the  hoof  for  it  involves  the  cutting  away  of  vital  parts.  The  common  name  with 
many  of  the  Arabs  for  the  horse's  frog  is  md-ya — an  Aryan  word  meaning  matiHx, 
or  essential  principle.  He  who  first  applied  this  term  to  the  part  in  question  must 
have  had  some  idea  of  its  functions.  Similar  indications  are  not  wantinef  in  the 
practice  of  even  the  most  ignorant  of  the  Arabs.      For  instance,  in  the  towns,  all 


1  The  authority  for  this  statement  is  the  third  poem  in  the  Di-\van  of  U'r-wa,  ibnu  '1  Ward. 


i8o 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


horses  and  mules  which  work  on  roads,  and  even  the  donkeys  of  the  water-carriers, 
are  shod  ;  but  the  ponies  which  draw  water  are  used  with  their  feet  in  the  natural 
state,  because  it  is  found  that  otherwise  they  slip.  And  in  the  desert,  when  the 
mare  is  shod,  one  hind-foot  is  always  left  without  armature,  to  give  it  the  firmer  hold 


The  Asiatic  Na'l,  or  Horse-Shoe. 


of  the  ground  in  the  wheeling  movements  of  the  mel^e.  With  all  this,  the  drift  of 
the  Arabs'  farriery  is  towards  the  destruction  of  the  foot's  natural  surface,  the  frog 
included,  and  the  substitution  of  a  plate  of  iron.  Hence,  when  one  of  their  horses 
casts  a  shoe,  the  animal  goes  as  tender  as  a  man  who,  for  the  first  time,  walks  out 


CHAP.  III.     THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH  OTHER    VARIETIES.  i8i 

barefoot.  And  when  a  pebble  works  In  at  the  central  opening-  in  the  shoe,  it  sets 
the  horse  a-limping,  like  the  pilgrim  with  the  unboiled  peas. 

It  follows  from  all  these  facts  that,  notwithstanding  the  natural  soundness  both 
of  the  horny  box  and  of  its  sensitive  contents,  in  Arabian  horses  there  is  no  part 
which  demands  more  careful  scrutiny  by  the  intending  purchaser.  He  who  has 
boueht  an  Arab  colt  with  flat  soles  and  a  brittle  crust,  will  derive  no  comfort  from 
being  informed,  when  cracks  and  vacuities  ensue,  that  such  defects  are  rare  in 
Eastern  horses.^ 

When  a  horse  is  lame  in  one  fore-leg,  and  the  cause  is  not  apparent,  stablemen 
commonly  say  that  he  is  "shoulder-tied,"  or  "  chest -foundered."  In  the  rare 
instances  in  which  the  lameness  depends  on  rheumatism,  or  on  accidental  injury 
of  the  deeper-seated  parts  of  the  shoulder,  this  opinion  may  practically  be  right ; 
but  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the  foot,  and  not  the  shoulder,  is  the  seat  of  the  evil. 
At  least  this  is  the  case  in  England,  but  it  may  be  doubted  if  it  is  equally  so  in 
primitive  countries.  The  compactness  of  the  foot  in  the  Arabian  breed  seems  to 
diminish  its  tendency  to  suffer,  through  sympathy,  when  inflammation  attacks  the 
respiratory  or  the  digestive  organs.  The  old  school  of  veterinarians  entered 
"chest-founder"  or  "body-founder,"  as  distinguished  from  "foot-founder,"  in  the 
list  of  horse  diseases,  but  we  do  not  know  how  far  their  views  are  now  accepted. 
It  is  necessary  to  make  allowance  for  the  effects  which  different  ways  of  treating 
horses,  in  different  countries  and  at  different  periods,  produce  on  their  diseases. 
In  Arabia,  horses  are  still  liable  to  be  ridden  till  they  drop,  by  the  Bedouin  and 
others.  Very  often,  mares  which  founder — that  is,  tumble  headlong^ — in  Al  Ghaz-u, 
with  the  lungs  or  some  other  important  internal  organ  in  a  state  of  acute  congestion, 
die  where  they  fall.  Those  which  recover  generally  remain,  at  the  best,  stiff  in 
their  action,  with  a  tendency  to  fall  lame  after  a  longer  or  shorter  course  of  fast 
work.  This  subject  is  so  full  of  interest  to  all  buyers  of  Arabians  that,  trusting 
to  the  reader's  indulgence,  we  shall  here  introduce  a  little  narrative  serving  to 
illustrate  it.  The  facts  about  to  be  detailed  relate  to  the  bay  Arabian  race-horse 
whose  portrait  appears  in  this  chapter.  In  1861  the  living  animal  became  ours,  as 
a  five-year-old,  soon  after  he  had  been  brought  from  Ku-wait  to  Bombay  by  one 
of  the  jam-bazes.  His  price  was  ^300  down,  with  certain  provisos,  which  subse- 
quently increased  it  to  ^500.  The  cause  of  its  being  so  hard  to  buy  him  was  that, 
although  he  was  as  yet  untrained  and  untried,  many  good  judges  considered,  from 
his  blood  and  his   style  of  moving,   that  he   might  prove,  as  he  actually  did,  the 

1  The  grey  Arab  racer,  Hermit,  could  not  be  trained  feet  were  too  "  shelly  "  to  retain  a  shoe.     The  chest- 


during  his  first  two  years  in  India,  owing  to  flat  feet. 
Another  very  highly  bred  Arabian,  of  the  same  colour, 
was  comparatively  useless  all  his  life  because  his  fore- 


nut  Arab,  Raby,  ran  in  many  races  with  an  iron  band 
riveted  round  a  fore-foot  in  which  was  a  sand  crack. 


1 82  GENERAL    VIEW   OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

winner  of  the  greatest  prize  of  tlie  Bombay  turf  tiie  following  season.  When  we 
bought  him,  as  also  when,  long  afterwards,  his  portrait  was  taken,  he  was  as  fat 
as  Shrewsbury  brawn,  as  they  say  in  Shropshire.  There  was  as  great  a  difference 
between  what  he  looks  like  in  the  picture  and  his  appearance  when  drawn  fine  by 
training,  as  between  the  block  of  marble  freshly  lifted  from  the  quarry  and  the  same 
piece  after  the  sculptor  has  chiselled  it.  At  the  same  time,  he  was  not  of  that  very 
noble  type  of  the  Arabian  which  people  take  for  their  ideal.  One  consideration 
which  induces  us  here  to  present  his  portrait  is,  that  the  reader  may  see  a  good 
game  Arab  of  the  class  which  may  fall  to  the  lot  of  any  one.  But  to  our  tale.  At 
the  time  of  purchase  he  was  passed  sound  by  a  veterinary  surgeon.  After  he  had 
been  taken  to  the  Deccan,  on  his  shedding  his  winter  coat,  the  marks  of  rowelling 
became  perceptible  on  his  off  shoulder.  This  was  startling ;  but  it  only  showed 
that,  in  some  unknown  countrj^,  he  had  been  considered  lame  in  the  part  in 
question.  In  the  course  of  the  summer  and  autumn  he  did  a  sufficient  amount 
of  strong  work  without  falling  amiss  ;  and  on  December  5  was  to  make  his  ddbut 
in  a  two-mile  race,  for  which  a  very  good  Arab  plater  Avas  the  favourite.  By  nature 
he  belonged  to  what  trainers  call  the  craving  kind,  and  ate  the  more  the  harder 
he  was  worked.  Having  had  it  impressed  on  us  early  in  life  that  fleshiness  is 
certain  to  stop  a  horse  in  a  long  race,  when  the  pace  is  true,  we  gave  him  that  last 
gallop  which  breaks  down  so  many  candidates,  and  for  want  of  which  so  many 
others  had  better  have  been  kept  in  the  stable.  He  pulled  up  sound  after  it ;  but 
when  he  walked  out  in  the  evening — -that  is,  less  than  twenty-four  hours  before  the 
saddling-bell  would  ring — he  was  lame  on  the  off  fore-leg,  with  "  nothing  to  be  seen." 
The  limb  was  kept  all  night  in  very  hot  water.  In  the  morning  he  appeared  sound, 
and  in  the  afternoon  won  his  race.  In  the  course  of  the  next  few  days  he  ran  four 
times,  and  was  only  once  beaten.  After  the  meeting  was  over,  it  became  necessary 
to  determine  whether  he  should  be  prepared  for  his  great  engagement,  the  "  Dealers' 
Plate,"  in  Bombay,  for  which  seventy-three  Arabs,  all  of  the  same  year's  importation, 
stood  entered.  Apparently  he  walked  sound,  but  a  few  runs  in  hand  at  the  trial  pace 
of  trotting  showed  that  he  was  lame  on  the  off  fore.  A  veterinary  surgeon  of  the 
Royal  Artillery,  after  several  examinations,  gave  the  opinion  that  he  had  navicular 
disease;  the  same  "sprain  of  the  coffin-joint,"  in  regard  to  which  the  first  English- 
man who  wrote  about  it  concluded  by  observing  that  "where  one  horse  happens  to 
be  really  lame  in  the  coffin-joint"  (in  which  the  navicular  joint  is  included),  "it  is 
mistaken  a  hundred  times  in  practice."  ^  The  new  light  which  has  been  thrown  on 
this  subject  by  later  investigators  was,  of  course,  before  us.  Nevertheless,  we  were 
presumptuous  enough  to  imagine  that,  even  if  the  navicular  disease  was  not  confined 

1  No  Foot,  No  Horse,  &c.  &c.,  by  Jeremiah  Bridges,      I     Hippopathology,  vol.  iv.  p.  132. 
Farrier  and  Anatomist :  1752.     Quoted  in  Percivall's      1 


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CHAP.  III.     THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH  OTHER    VARIETIES.  183 

to  Europe,  our  veterinary  adviser  might  have  made  a  mistake  in  this  particular 
instance.  Accordingly,  the  horse  was  started  off  to  Bombay,  a  journey  then  in- 
volving a  march  of  two  hundred  miles  in  order  to  reach  the  railway.  On  our  fol- 
lowing soon  afterwards,  we  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  him  win  from  six  competitors, 
on  the  4th  of  February  1862,  the  then  blue  ribbon  of  the  Indian  turf,  as  well  as 
another  considerable  race  of  the  same  meeting.  All  that  time  his  state  remained 
just  what  it  was  at  the  beginning,  no  better  and  no  worse.  A  cynic  of  the  turf 
to  whom  we  showed  him  said  that  he  was  "  lame  in  his  head  "  !  For  once,  horse- 
flesh had  fulfilled  the  prophetic  saying.  The  palma  nobilis  had  been  found  knotted 
in  the  forelocks  of  a  Ku-hai-lan.^  The  next  thing  was  to  get  the  good  and  true 
horse  restored  to  soundness.  With  this  object,  he  was  taken  to  the  most  experi- 
enced veterinary  surgeon  then  in  India,  whose  opinion  was  as  follows  :  "  Lame 
in  both  fore-legs  ;  slight  ossific  deposit  round  off  pastern,  with  inflammation  :  not 
likely  to  be  ring-bone,  or,  in  other  words,  the  result  of  causes  generally  pro- 
ductive of  ring  -  bone  :  also  has  small  pointed  splint  inside  upper  part  of  near 
fore-shank,  probably  caused  by  his  making  too  much  use  of  near  fore-leg,  to  save 
lame  off"  fore.  N.B. — Feet  remarkably  cool,  and  withotU  a  symptom  of  disease ; 
suspensory  ligament  and  tendons  of  the  leg  perfectly  sound."  In  the  face  of  this 
record,  it  was  impossible  to  entertain  the  idea  of  calling  on  the  horse  for  further 
exertion.  When  he  arrived  at  his  proper  home,  the  splint  was  found  to  have 
become  inflamed  in  the  course  of  nine  days  of  marching.  The  veterinarian  who 
had  first  seen  him  was,  as  it  happened,  absent ;  and  a  third  member  of  the  pro- 
fession was  therefore  consulted.  From  him  opinion  number  three  proceeded,  which 
was  that  the  Arab  owner  who  had  inserted  rowels  in  the  shoulder  had  judged 
correctly;  in  other  words,  that  this  was  a  case  of  "chest- founder."  We  then  sent 
the  horse  to  the  author  of  the  "  ossific  deposit  round  pastern  "  theory  ;  and  eight 
months  afterwards  received  him  back,  with  a  note  intimating  that,  though  still  slightly 
lame,  he  was  as  well  as  ever  he  would  be.  For  several  years  thereafter  he  led 
the  life  of  a  gentleman  retired  on  an  annuity.  He  saw  no  more  veterinary 
surgeons,  and  seldom  was  asked  to  carry  his  master,  owing  to  his  "shoulder-tied" 
condition.  At  last,  in  the  summer  of  1865,  having  other  horses  in  training,  we 
took  the  opportunity  to  give  the  veteran  a  further  trial.  After  a  few  weeks  of 
steady  work,  he  again  failed  in  the  same  way  as  before.  This  time  there  was 
considerable  tumefaction  on  the  inner  surface  of  the  off  fore-arm.  The  highly 
qualified,  but  decidedly  old-fashioned,  veterinary  officer  of  the  King's  Dragoon 
Guards,  then  quartered  at  Secunderabad,  when  he  examined  him,  formed  substan- 
tially the  same  view  of  the  case  as  the  Arabs  had  done.      After  a  time  he  heated  an 

^  The  generic  name,  as  will  in  due  time  appear,  of  all  the  pure-bred  strains  of  Arabia. 


i84  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

iron,  and  applied  It  across  the  fore-arm.  We  had  never  before  seen  this  treatment, 
but  had  known  many  horses  which,  when  brought  from  Arabia,  bore  the  marks  of 
the  firing-iron  in  the  same  situation.  The  object  in  l^eeping  the  horse  so  long  idle 
had  partly  been  to  reward  him,  and  partly  to  give  him  a  chance  of  becoming  sound, 
and  winning  further  honours.  But  evidently  this  was  not  to  be.  The  poor  animal 
had  undergone  so  much  medical  and  surgical  treatment,  that  he  had  learned  to 
recognise  a  doctor  as  a  little  boy  does  a  schoolmaster,  and  all  to  no  purpose.  An 
appointment  was  therefore  found  for  him  in  the  stud  department. 

Long  afterwards,  the  above  particulars  were  recalled  to  memory  on  its  ap- 
pearing that,  in  the  opinion  equally  of  the  Bedouin  and  of  the  town  Arabs,  the 
region  of  the  chest  is  often  the  seat  of  acute  or  chronic  lameness.  A  round  course 
was  lately  laid  out  in  the  desert,  near  Baghdad,  and  several  of  the  Osmanli  Pashas 
now  amuse  themselves  by  getting  up  races  on  it.  Their  sleek  and  prancing 
chargers  are,  however,  invariably  beaten  by  a  certain  diminutive  mare,  scarred 
on  the  chest  and  shoulders  as  if  she  had  been  fired  with  a  gridiron,  which  a  Ba- 
da-wi  brings  into  the  town  the  night  before  the  event,  and  hurriedly  takes  away 
again,  for  fear  of  being  deprived  of  her.  This  mare  may  have  navicular  disease, 
for  though  no  one  would  call  her  lame  when  she  is  galloping,  she  walks  and  trots 
stiffly ;  but  of  course  they  who  fired  her  over  the  fore-quarters  did  not  suspect  her 
feet.  Referring  to  the  frequency  of  marks  of  firing  on  the  horses  of  the  Bedouin, 
we  may  take  this  opportunity  of  saying  that  it  is  seldom  advisable  to  buy  a  colt 
which  has  been  fired.  It  is  true  that  these  people  fire  their  horses,  as  they  also 
do  their  children,  rather  at  random.  One  of  their  saws  is,  A-khiru  'd  da-wd,  el 
kai,  which  means.  The  last  of  remedies  is  the  scoring,  or  firing.  When  all  the 
marks  are  on  the  flanks  and  belly,  nothing  more  serious  than  an  attack  of  colic 
may  have  led  to  the  performance  of  the  operation.  In  other  cases,  especially  if  the 
animal  be  aged,  and  the  lines  run  equally  over  the  trunk  and  the  extremities,  the 
owner  may  have  thus  blemished  his  property  as  a  precaution  against  the  covetous 
glances  of  Pashas.  But  it  should  not  be  too  much  taken  for  granted  that  the  desert 
Arab  is  a  mere  ignorant  fellow.  In  many  respects  he  is  so  ;  but  no  human  being  is 
cleverer  than  he  is,  at  once  in  making  the  most  of  his  own  property  and  in  trans- 
ferring to  himself  that  of  others.  To  get  up  early  gives  one  no  advantage  in  dealing 
with  nomads,  who  never,  properly  speaking,  go  to  bed  at  all.  We  have  three  times 
bought  from  the  Aeniza  colts  which  were  striped  with  the  firing-iron  from  the 
wither  downward.  They  all  had  the  best  of  feet ;  but  they  had  not  been  long  in 
training  when  they  went  amiss  in  the  same  manner  as  the  rowelled  one  of  the 
foregoing  history  had  done.  In  regard  to  one  of  them,  we  subsequently  learned 
that  at  the  time  of  the  application  of  the  iron,  he  lay  between  life  and  death  after 
having  been  overridden.      The  bearing   of  these  observations  on  our  immediate 


CHAP.  III.     THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH  OTHER    VARIETIES. 


i8s 


subject  is  obvious.  If,  as  is  possible,  the  Bedouin  fire  their  horses'  chests  and 
shoulders,  when  attention  to  the  feet  would  be  more  germane  to  the  matter,  then 
that  tends  to  modify  the  view  here  adopted  of  the  exceptional  soundness  of  the 
latter  part  in  the  Arabian  variety.  But,  subject  to  the  opinion  of  professional 
persons,  we  necessarily,  on  this  point,  follow  the  guidance  of  the  facts  which  have 
just  been  stated  from  our  own  experience  of  Arab  horses. 

Durability,  in  the  sense  of  wearing  well  and  wearing  long,  is  traceable  to  so 
many  different  sources,  that  only  general  statements  can  be  made  regarding  it. 
Some  horses,  like  some  men,  last  long,  owing  to  the  care  which  they  take  of  them- 
selves. Even  if  they  have  the  power,  they  have  not  the  will  to  work.  Others, 
in  consequence  of  faults  or  vices,  spend  half  of  their  time  in  being  made  up  for  the 
market.  The  sort  of  durability  here  being  spoken  of  is  a  totally  different  quality. 
It  depends  less  on  where,  or  by  what  people,  a  horse  is  bred,  than  on  Iiozu  he  is 
bred.  Nature  does  not  confer  it,  by  way  of  privilege,  on  one  breed  more  than  on 
another.  It  is  greatly  subject  to  the  influence  of  climate,  habit,  and  mode  of 
rearing.  But,  speaking  broadly,  the  power  of  lasting  is  one  of  the  happiest  pro- 
ducts of  what  is  known  as  high  breedingr-.  Give  us  a  horse  in  which  the  keen 
and  generous  spirit  of  emulation  — Jicr  Dials  sensible  —  animates  a  form  perfectly 
adapted  to  the  tasks  demanded  of  it,  and  we  will  take  the  rest  for  granted.  The 
Arabian  breed  remarkably  illustrates  this  favourable  combination,  but  it  must  not 
be  imagined  that  it  makes  all  competition  halt  behind  it.  Authentic  cases  of 
longevity  in  exported  Arab  horses  might  be  multiplied  till  the  reader's  patience 
was  exhausted.^  But  for  every  such  record,  an  equally  notable  one  might  be  cited 
from  the  history  of  our  own  breeds.-  Others  before  us  have  observed  that  old  age 
does  not  necessarily  begin  in  horses  so  soon  as  many  people  imagine.  An  old 
writer  says  that  a  horse  of  5  yrs.  is  like  a  man  of  20  ;  a  horse  of  10  like  a  man  of 
40;  a  horse  of  15  like  a  man  of  50 ;  a  horse  of  20  like  a  man  of  60;  of  25,  like 


'  The  late  brilliant  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army 
in  India,  General  Lord  Roberts,  now  rides  in  the  Park 
in  London  a  grey  Arab  charger  which  has  carried 
him  in  his  campaigns  and  military  inspections  for 
more  than  sixteen  years,  has  never  been  unfit  for 
duty,  and  still  shows  himself  off  on  parade  as  if  he 
were  a  four-year-old.  We  hear  of  another  Eastern 
evergreen,  in  the  possession  of  General  and  Mrs 
TurnbuU,  fonnerly  of  Calcutta,  and  now  of  Brighton, 
which  was  brought  to  England  eighteen  years  ago  ; 
is  at  least  24  years  old,  and  to  all  appearance  is  as 
young  as  ever,  especially  when  mounted. 

-  Delaberre  Blaine,  in  Outlines  of  the  Veterina>y 
Art,  4th  edit.,  1832,  p.  39,  states  that,  about  a  cen- 
tury ago,  three  monuments  were  to  be  seen  at  Dul- 


wich  of  three  horses  which  inhabited  the  same 
stable,  and  which  died  at  35,  37,  and  39  respectively. 
On  the  same  page  there  is  a  reference  to  a  large 
horse  of  the  Mersey  and  Irwell  Navigation,  which 
was  "well  known  to  have  been  in  his  sixty-second 
year  when  he  died."  Unless  there  be  a  mixing  up  of 
the  stories,  longevity  in  horses  must  be  traditional  at 
Dulwich.  For  Blaine's  contemporary,  Lawrence  (v. 
The  Horse,  1829,  p.  10),  says:  "The  writer,  some  ■ 
years  since,  saw  at  Dulwich  two  geldings,  the  one  48, 
the  other  54,  years  of  age,  both  of  them  capable  of 
performing  some  light  daily  labour,  the  property  of 
his  friend,  the  late  E.  Brown,  Esq.,  who  had  both 
their  portraits." 


2  A 


1 86 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


one  of  70  ;  of  30,  like  one  of  80  ;  and  of  35,  like  one  of  90.  Such  a  scale  may  not 
be  worth  much,  but  we  believe  that  what  makes  so  many  of  us  buy  and  use 
young  horses  is  the  commercial  idea  that  a  horse  of  10,  when  we  would  sell  him, 
does  not  readily  find  a  purchaser. 

There  are  two  theories  connected  with  durability  in  horses  which  it  may 
be  proper  to  notice.  One  is,  that  Arab  horses  last  the  longer  because  they  are 
neither  over-fed  nor  over- worked  before  maturity ;  and  the  other,  that  wearing 
qualities  are  to  be  looked  for  in  foreign  breeds  in  proportion  as  Arab  blood  is 
shared  by  them.  For  neither  theory  does  the  case  admit  of  being  made  out. 
Even  if  it  were  to  be  conceded,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  the  Arabian  horse 
surpasses  other  horses  in  hardness,  the  position  which  we  have  all  along  been 
maintaining  is,  that  his  virtue  in  this  respect  is  much  connected  with  the  fact  of 
his  being  early  accustomed  to  the  saddle.  It  is  not  work,  but  the  abuse  of  it, 
which  ruins  young  horses.  In  so  far  as  lasting  long  on  the  turf  forms  a  criterion, 
there  never  was  an  Arabian  which  made  a  better  record  than,  for  example, 
Fisherman,  in  England,  and  the  New  South  Wales  horse,  Kingcraft.  The  former, 
we  find,  began  his  public  career  in  1855  as  a  two-year-old  ;  and  in  that  year  and  the 
following  one  faced  the  starter  114  times,  and  won  sixty-five  races.  The  latter, 
after  being  thrice  defeated  as  a  two-year-old  at  Sydney,  crossed  the  sea,  and  came 
to  the  post  seven  times  at  Calcutta,  Lucknow,  and  Bombay,  as  a  three-year-old, 
winning  every  time.  When  he  retired  in  18S1  he  had  been  nine  years  in  training, 
had  contested  sixty-eight  races,  and  won  forty-six.  These  hard  facts  deserve  to  be 
considered  in  connection  with  the  proposals  which  are  sometimes  made  for  the 
abolition  of  the  ordeal  of  early  training.  And  the  practice  of  the  Arabs,  though 
full  of  abuses,  supports  the  general  conclusion  that  colts  and  fillies  which  are  bred 
for  galloping  ought  to  be  taught  their  business  as  soon  as  they  can  carry  a  light 
weight.^  In  regard  to  the  other  point,  it  surely  is  an  extraordinary  assumption 
that  because  Arab  blood  is  well  fitted  to  fortify  certain  other  races  of  horses,  it 


1  The  fact  that  Echpse  was  not  raced  till  five  )'ears 
old  is  quoted  by  John  Lawrence,  in  Tlic  Horse 
(1829),  as,  in  part,  the  secret  of  his  vast  powers. 
The  early  champions  of  the  Australian  turf,  also, 
naturally  included  horses  which  began  late  and  yet 
secured  the  highest  honours.  Take,  for  example, 
the  redoubtable  Jorrocks,  a  light  bay  gelding  with 
black  points,  standing  only  14  hands  2  inches,  whose 
record  is  given  by  Mr  Curr.  Jorrocks  was  allowed  to 
ripen  in  the  sequestered  township  of  Mudgee,  in  New 
South  Wales,  unruffled  by  whip  or  curry-comb.  He 
was  set  in  his  prime  to  the  humble  drudgery  of  stock 
horse  and  hack  alternately  ;  and  the  speed  and  stout- 
ness which  he  exhibited  in  his  vocation,  or  in  occa- 


sional bursts  after  the  bounding  denizens  of  the 
Australian  bush,  led  to  his  being  put  in  training. 
His  owner  was  induced  to  exchange  him  for  eight 
heifers,  "  equivalent  to  about  £\o  sterling,"  and  his 
adventures  then  began.  From  1840  to  1852  he  re- 
mained a  favourite  of  the  public.  He  started  eighty- 
seven  times,  and  won  sixty  races,  reckoning  seven 
walks  over.  {Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  39,  pp.  1 51-164.) 
We  apprehend,  however,  that  there  is  no  longer  much 
chance  for  amateur  race-horses,  so  to  call  them,  either 
in  England  or  in  Australia.  In  both  countries  it  is 
now  imperative  that  the  horses  which  are  to  excel  in 
running  should  be  trained  at  an  early  age. 


CHAP.  III.     THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH  OTHER    VARIETIES. 


187 


constitutes  the  pre-eminent  source  of  stamina.  Confining  ourselves  to  well-known 
breeds,  we  may  here  recall  as  evidence  those  which  once  upon  a  time  flourished 
in  India,  and  to  which  a  slight  allusion  has  already  been  made.^  It  does  not 
concern  us  here  to  notice  the  produce  of  the  studs  which  the  East  India  Company 
maintained  for  the  supply  of  its  military  requirements.  Those  establishments, 
now  abolished,  turned  out  fine  horses,  superior  in  size  to  Arabs,  and  having 
very  good  constitutions;'-^  but,  practically,  such  were  more  English  than  Indian; 
and  most  of  them  were  the  results  of  infinite  crossing  and  recrossing.  Our  refer- 
ence is  to  the  indigenous  breeds  on  which  the  cavalry  of  the  native  princes  and 
captains  was  mounted,  throughout  the  long  struggle  for  the  prize  of  ascendancy 
between  England  and  the  powers  and  hordes  of  India.  History  contains  no 
account  of  large  bodies  which  moved  more  rapidly  or  more  incessantly  than  the 
resfular  horse  of  the  Mahratta  armies,  and  the  roaming^  leo'ions  of  tlie  Pindharis. 
The  breeds  of  horses  which  those  times  encouraged  died  out  but  slowly.  Indeed 
some  may  think  that  they  are  not  even  yet  extinct,  but  are  merely  in  abeyance, 
till  the  department  which  the  modern  Government  of  India  has  created  for  their 
"  improvement "  shall  disappear  in  the  next  great  Eastern  tournament.  But,  gener- 
ally speaking,  they  now  exhibit  the  characters  which  are  to  be  looked  for  in  disused 
and  neglected  breeds.  Those  of  us  who  knew  the  East  India  Company's  "  Irregular 
Cavalry"  before  the  Mutiny,  will  recognise  in  the  subjoined  sketch  a  stamp  of 
charger  which  was  often  to  be  seen  caracoling  under  a  swarthy  troop-leader  of 
that  period. 

In  India  there  is  a  vague  tradition  that  from,  say,  1820  to  1857,  when  our 
best  Irregular  Cavalry  was  more  or  less  mounted  on  horses  of  the  above  pattern, 
the  finest  breeds  owed  their  lasting  powers  and  general  superiority  to  strains  of 
imported  Arab  blood  which  were  introduced,  early  in  the  centurj^  by  the  Nizam 
of  Hyderabad  in  the  Deccan  and  his  nobles.  This  story  has  a  foreign  ring ; 
and  even  if  it  be  authentic,  it  can  have  only  a  restricted  application.  Something 
is  known   to   us   of  the   manners   and   feelings  of  the  more  old-fashioned    of   the 


1   V.  ante,  p.  91. 

-  The  Orient.  Sport.  Mag.  for  October  1866  thus 
describes  one  of  these  "  stud-bred  "  horses  :  "  Bomb- 
proof, a  bay  stud-bred  gelding,  foaled  in  1843,  became 
the  property  of  an  officer  of  Engineers  in  184S,  in 
whose  possession  he  remained  until  his  death,  which 
was  caused  by  an  accident,  ...  on  20th  September 
1866.  He  was  therefore  twenty-four  years  of  age. 
Bombproof  served  at  the  siege  of  Multan  ;  battle  of 
Gujrat  ;  pursuit  of  the  Sikhs,  under  Sir  W.  Gilbert ; 
battle  on  the  Hindun  (May  1857);  Badle  ka  Sarai  ; 
siege  of  Delhi ;  capture  of  Lucknow  ;  a  hot  weather 


campaign  in  Oudh  and  Rohilcund  ;  and  a  cold  weather 
campaign  in  Rohilcund  and  Oudh.  To  narrate  his 
performances  in  getting  over  long  distances,  and  his 
apparently  perfect  indifference  to  regular  feeding 
(generally  deemed  so  necessary  to  stud-breds  in 
particular),  would  certainly  tax  the  patience  and 
belief  of  your  readers.  I  will  therefore  only  say 
that  he  commenced  the  Mutiny  campaign  in  his 
fifteenth  year,  and  was  in  constant  work,  as  the  only 
horse  of  a  mounted  officer,  from  May  1S57  to  February 
1859,  without  being  sick  or  sorry,  and  was  in  capital 
condition  at  the  end  of  it." 


i88 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK.   III. 


populations  of  India,  in  parts  which  modern  changes  have  as  yet  but  slightly 
affected.  And  we  have  often  perceived  among  the  Rajputs  and  the  Mahrattas 
the  same  anxiety  to  keep  pure  the  blood  of  a  breed  of  horses  which  distinguishes 
the  Arabs.  In  1859  we  served  with  a  regiment  which  was  mounted  on  mares 
obtained  from  the  breeders  and  dealers  of  Central  India  and  the  Deccan.  These 
animals  were  the  property  of  their  riders.  The  British  officers  of  the  regiment 
rode  Arab  chargers.  Most  of  the  horsemen  were  mere  rovers,  who  had  bought 
their  mares   and  arms   with   money  advanced  to  them  by  the  Government.      But 


there  were  a  few  who  could  recount  their  ancestors ;  and  one,  in  particular,  rode 
at  the  head  of  his  troop  a  large  dun  -  coloured  mare  which  he  regarded  as  a 
family  heirloom.  One  day  it  was  proposed  to  this  gallant  swordsman  that  he 
should  mate  his  noble  mare  with  an  equally  noble  Arabian,  the  property  of  the 
late  General  W.  F.  Beatson,  of  Bashi-bazouk  celebrity- — a  part  of  whose  special 
command  the  regiment  formed.  At  the  risk  of  affronting  a  singularly  irascible 
General  officer,  by  whom  the  offer  was  meant  as  an  act  of  condescension  and 
favour,  the  Rajput  evaded  coming  to  the  point,  and  the  matter  dropped. 
About   twenty  years    afterwards   we    found    ourselves    in    political    charge   of  the 


CHAP.  III.     THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH   OTHER    VARIETIES.  189 

western  states  of  Rajputana.  One  of  these  is  Mar-war,  a  part  of  which,  the 
arid  district  of  Ma-la-ni,  is  directly  under  British  management.  Nominally, 
Ma-la-ni  is  watered  by  the  river  Lu-ni,  but  its  physical  features  are  almost  as 
severe  as  those  of  Sha-mi-ya.  As  the  saying  is,  blades  of  steel  grow  better  in  it 
than  blades  of  corn ;  and  its  camel-pasturing  clans,  of  Aryan  stock,  have  traits 
in  common  with  the  Bedouin  Arabs.  The  mares  which  they  breed,  and  of  which 
they  are  most  tenacious,  display  the  clean  muscle,  lean  head,  thin  nostril,  and  large 
dark  eye  of  the  race  of  Najd.  We  were,  however,  assured  that  the  breed  owed 
nothing  to  crossing,  but,  on  the  contrary,  had  been  preserved  and  handed  down 
unaltered  in  these  pure-blooded  Rajput  families  through  centuries  of  warfare. 
One  or  more  of  our  predecessors,  it  was  further  stated,  had  recommended  the  use 
of  Arabian  stallions  ;  but  by  means  of  that  passive  resistance  which  now  forms  the 
sole  defence  of  the  people  of  India,  the  unwelcome  proposal  had  been  put  aside. 
Such  at  least  were  the  representations  which  the  Ma-la-ni  horse-breeders  made  to  us 
when  we  marched  over  their  desert  pasture-lands  in  1880.  Of  course  it  is  possible 
that  they  were  romancing,  and  that,  after  all,  the  beauty  and  energy  of  their  mares 
are  derived  from  Arabs.  If  any  reader  know  that  the  case  is  so,  we  are  only  too 
ready  to  be  corrected. 

Character. 

Tractability  is  intimately  bound  up  with  temper,  than  which  there  is  no  more 
important  element  of  character.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  find  another  breed 
of  horses  which  is  so  uniformly  distinguished  by  evenness  of  temper,  gentle- 
ness, and  willingness,  as  the  Arabian  ;  and  the  explanation  is  easy.  The  force 
of  human  companionship  in  forming  the  characters  of  inferior  animals  has  been 
recognised  from  antiquity  downward.  The  story  of  the  Seven  Sleepers  of 
Ephesus  receives  in  Persian  literature  the  embellishment,  that  the  dog  which 
shared  their  three  hundred  and  nine  years  ^  of  cave  life  became  a  man !  With 
the  Arabs  and  their  horses  serving  to  illustrate  this  influence,  it  is  unnecessary 
to  fall  back  on  legend.  The  common  representation  that  the  Bedouin  and  their 
mares  dwell  together  under  one  tent-roof  belongs  to  the  domain  of  poetry,  but  the 
groundwork  of  it  may  be  accepted.  In  the  desert,  tlie  mares  and  foals  and  stallions 
stand  day  and  night  before  their  masters.  There  are  no  grooms  in  our  sense. 
Black  slaves  keep  the  ground  clean,  and  the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  tent-folk 
wait  upon  the  mares.  Woman,  heaven  be  praised  !  is  everywhere  merciful  and  com- 
passionate ;  and  romance  becomes  reality  when  a  drooping  mare,  or  a  motherless 
foal,  is  taken  into  the  best  part  of  the  tent  to  be  nursed.      In  villages  the  mare's 

^   V.  Al  Kur-an,  S.  xviii.  24. 


190  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

shed  is  close  to  the  habitation  in  which  the  family  life  proceeds.  The  result  is,  that 
food  and  fellowship  are  among  the  first  ideas  which  are  associated  in  the  minds  of 
Arab  horses  with  the  human  figure.  The  mares  turn  as  kindly  to  those  around 
them  as  "  Gustavus  "  did  to  Dugald  Dalgetty.  The  youngling  takes  its  cue  from  the 
dam,  and  is  not  afraid  of  that  with  which  they  are  all  familiar.  The  colt  which  is 
handled  by  every  one  from  the  first,  and  ridden  as  soon  as  he  is  strong  enough,  is 
sure  to  prove  docile  and  obedient.  It  is  thus  that  "  nature"  forms  itself  We  all 
know  to  our  cost  how  prone  horses  are  to  practise  that  which  they  have  learned. 
One  that  has  run  away  with  his  rider  only  a  few  times,  whether  through  fear  or 
frolic,  or  kicked  in  harness  because  a  strap  or  a  fly  fretted  him,  may  escape  falling 
into  the  habit  of  doing  so  ;  but  the  horse  which  has  often  done  a  thing  will  always 
do  it.  The  best  systems  have  weak  places.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  Arabian 
breed  suffers,  among  the  Bedouin,  from  over-galloping,  and  among  the  agricultural 
classes,  from  over- weighting,  before  the  bones  and  joints  are  set.  In  this  way,  prob- 
ably, is  produced  the  ungraceful,  but  not  necessarily  detrimental,  turning  in  of  the 
hocks,^  with  or  without  deviation  of  the  fore-legs  also  from  their  proper  relative  posi- 
tion, which  is  so  prevalent.  But  almost  anything  is  better  than  letting  a  young 
horse  grow  up  unmastered,  so  that  he  must  be  what  is  called  "  broken  "  on  the 
wheel  of  the  "  rough-rider,"  after  he  has  become  strong  and  wilful.  Even  when 
full  allowance  is  made  for  the  advantages  of  early  tuition,  Arab  men  deserve  some 
credit  for  the  fine  temper  of  Arab  horses.  The  most  patient  colt  may  learn  to 
resist  his  rider,  if  either  his  anger  be  excited  or  too  much  of  his  own  way  be  given 
to  him.  A  little  incident  which  we  lately  witnessed  in  a  crowded  thoroughfare  in 
Baghdad  may  here  be  worth  introducing.  An  awkward  groom  had  tumbled  off  the 
back  of  a  playful  filly,  and  left  her  free  to  career  hither  and  thither.  Among  the 
spectators  there  was  nobody  who  blamed  the  filly.  A  red-bearded  Persian,  whose 
book-stall  was  kicked  into  the  Tigris  by  her,  had  the  sense  to  curse  the  biped  and 
not  the  quadruped.  When  she  was  caught,  and  the  end  of  her  halter-rope  was  put 
into  the  groom's  hand  by  a  bystander,  the  man  merely  jumped  on  her  back  and  rode 
quietly  away.  The  Arabs  lose  their  temper  with  one  another,  and  are  both  rude 
and  violent ;  but  they  think  it  absurd  to  burst  into  a  passion  with  irrational  creatures. 
One  of  the  few  so-called  vicious  horses  ever  owned  by  us  was  an  Arab  plater,  which 
had  been  cruelly  flogged  in  his  races.  At  first  it  was  impossible  to  please  him  ;  and 
if  any  one  who  was  dressed  like  his  late  Persian  jockey  came  in  sight,  he  would 
rush  open-mouthed  at  him.  After  about  a  year,  notwithstanding  his  being  kept  in 
training,  the  evil  spirit  left  him,  apart  from  any  special  treatment  beyond  the 
potent  magic  of  kindness.       If  the   other  method  had    been   continued,   it  might 

1  When  the  horse  is  said  to  be  "  cow-hocked." 


CHAP.  III.     THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH  OTHER    VARIETIES. 


191 


have  made  him  into  what  is  called  a  "  born  devil."  And  then,  if  he  had  gone  to 
stud,  very  likely  the  same  crooked  temper  would  have  "  run  in  his  blood."  The 
hereditary  fault  of  buck-jumping — that  is,  making  both  the  rider  and  the  saddle 
fly  like  shuttlecocks — which  forms  a  great  objection  to  the  common  kinds  of  Aus- 
tralian horses,  is  understood  to  originate  in  a  certain  violent  process  of  "breaking" 
to  which  they  are  subjected.  Perhaps  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  there  never 
was  what  is  called  a  vicious  horse  without  there  being  a  vicious,  or,  at  all  events,  un- 
civilised and  reckless,  man  more  or  less  connected  with  it.  When  we  see  any  one 
beating,  or  roaring  at,  a  horse,  every  time  that  he  shies  or  stumbles,  or  unmercifully 
punishing  him  in  a  race,  we  always  wish  that  he  could  be  changed  into  a  Yahoo. 

Tractability  and  temper  having  thus  been  taken  together,  let  us  pass  to  "  abste- 
miousness "  ;  alongside  of  which  the  same  writer  might  have  mentioned  fortitude. 
Both  these  virtues  are  made  in  the  same  mould.  One  is,  the  power  oi  going  without ; 
and  the  other,  the  power  of  iievei'-  minding.  The  reader  has  seen  how  the  Arab  of 
the  desert  can  both  feast  and  fast,  and  how  his  mare  can  do  so  with  him.  Sa'-di  says, 
that  to  Jieat  the  oven  of  the  stomach  every  niimUe,  is  to  suffer  for  it  in  the  day  of  want ; 
but  such  an  idea  is  too  literary  for  the  Arabs.  Since  beginning  this  chapter,  we 
have  been  present  at  a  supper  among  the  Bedouin,  when  the  leader  of  a  successful 
foray  was  feasting  his  companions.  There  was  only  one  dish,  a  vast  wooden 
trencher,  as  black,  from  never  being  washed,  as  the  mouth  of  a  coal-pit.  In  it  was 
served  a  camel,  hacked  in  pieces,  boiled  to  rags,  and  piled  on  a  heap  of  dingy  rice.^ 
The  "  heads  of  families,"  a  phrase  which  among  the  Arabs  does  not  include  women, 
were  gathered  round  this,  three  or  four  deep.  The  mess  was  smoking  hot,  but  the 
Bedouin  manners  do  not  permit  any  one  to  hesitate  on  this  account.  The  same 
desert  code  which  binds  the  host  to  fill  the  platter,  obliges  the  guest  to  do  immediate 
justice  to  it.  Certainly  no  delay  occurred  on  this  occasion.  Rows  of  brawny  rio-ht 
arms,  bared  to  above  the  elbow,  kept  making  play  into  and  out  of  the  layers  of  rice 
and  camel.  As  one  man  after  another  retired  wiping  his  fingers  ^  on  his  cloak  or  on 
the  tent  wall,  others  succeeded.  In  a  short  time  only  the  ddbris  remained  in  the 
platter,  which  was  then  carried  out  by  the  African  servants.  For  a  long  time  pre- 
viously, nothing  more  substantial  than  dates  and  dried  milk,  or  wheat  porridge,  had 
come  in  the  way  of  these  people.  Whether  a  healthy  man  shall  require  one  meal 
a-day,  or  three  meals,  more  or  less  depends  on  habit.  It  is  said  very  truly  that  "  half 
the  good  of  a  horse  goes  in  at  his  mouth  ; "  but  then  we  must  remember  that 
"forcing"  disturbs  nature's  balance.      In  order  to  send  a  horse  to  the  three-year-old 


'  The  Bedouin  term  for  this  piece  dc  resistance  is, 
iallu  V  lahm,  or  mound  of  flesh. 

-  The  Arabs  call  the  fingers  of  the  right  hand  Al 
Khain-sa--\.<t.,  par  ex'cellence,  The  Five,  by  means  of 


which  the  food  is  conveyed  to  the  mouth.  The  first 
time  that  a  Ba-da-wi  sees  a  Frank  dining,  he  wonders 
if  he  have  a  leprosy  in  his  fingers,  so  that  he  cannot 
eat  with  them  ! 


192 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


Starting-post  as  fully  furnished  as  colts  of  that  age  are  in  England,  as  much  "  forc- 
ing "  is  requisite  as  for  the  bringing  out  of  a  John  Stuart  Mill  in  our  species.  The 
point  here  is,  that  horses  which  have  lived  luxuriously  in  racing-stables,  no  matter 
what  their  breed  is,  cannot,  as  a  rule,  be  expected  to  endure  privations,  as  well  as 
those  do  which  have  experienced  hard  times  from  foalhood  upward,  owing  to  the 
poor  circumstances  of  their  owners. 

On  the  march  to  Magdala  six  horses  stood  before  our  bell-tent.  One 
was  a  daughter  of  Kingston,  which  had  won  races  both  in  England  and  India. 
Another  was  the  Bengal-bred  plater  Verdant  Green, ^  whose  sire  was  an  Arab,  and 
his  dam  an  imported  thoroughbred  English  mare.  Two  were  Arabs  ;  and  two  were 
ponies,  one  Indian  and  the  other  Abyssinian.  The  two  last  lived  on  what  the 
others  left,  or  on  what  they  would  not  eat,  and  performed  far  more  than  their  own 
share  of  work.  The  Indian  pony,  in  particular,  whose  scarred  back  and  turned-in 
hocks  betokened  early  familiarity  with  the  burden,  carried  us  many  a  march  lasting 
from  sunrise  to  sunset,  and  improved  in  condition  all  the  time.  Fortitude  is  as 
marked  a  characteristic  of  the  Arabian  breed  as  frugality.  In  the  days  when 
most  veterinary  surgeons  were  partial  to  strong  measures,  we  have  seen  many  a 
poor  broken-down  Arab  racer  fired  and  blistered  on  both  fore-legs  at  once,  but 
never  one  which  refused  his  nose-bag  after  the  operation.  Horses  of  European 
breeding  are  generally  less  patient.  We  know  of  a  case  in  India  in  which  a 
thoroughbred  English  colt  so  banged  himself  about  from  mingled  rage  and  pain, 
after  being  blistered,  that  it  became  necessary  to  destroy  him.  The  way  in  which 
the  Arabian  will  pass  through  strangles,  or  catarrh  and  influenza,  without  losing  his 
natural  spirit  and  gaiety,  is  one  of  his  characteristics.  As  a  racer  he  is  indomitable. 
Heats  are  his  forte  ;  and  he  will  run  two  or  more  races  in  one  afternoon.  On  the 
13th  of  February  1862,  In  a  two-mile  cup  race  at  Calcutta,  the  grey  Arab  Hermit, 
though  defeated  by  the  thoroughbred  English  mare  Voltige,  gave  Voltigeur's 
daughter  such  a  stretching,  that  the  following  day,  when  the  two  were  to  have  met 
again  in  a  two-mile  race,  the  mare  had  to  be  kept  at  home,  and  the  Arab  proved  the 
winner,  in  the  excellent  time  of  3  minutes  and  5 1  seconds.  Many  a  staunch  Arab 
plater  could  be  mentioned  whose  doughty  deeds  have  been  performed  after  he 
has  more  or  less  broken  down.  It  is  but  seldom  that  a  horse  can  be  kept  in 
training  when  the  flexor  tendons  are  permanently  damaged  ;  but  many  an  Arab 
racer  has  continued,  year  after  year,  to  add  to  his  laurels,  in  spite  of  a  thickened 


1  When  the  expedition  broke  up  at  ZuUa,  a  York- 
shireman  bought  Verdant.  Afterwards,  merely  on 
the  ground  that  he  had  "  come  from  some  place  far 
abroad,"  they  exhibited  him  at  Islington  as  an  Ara- 
bian.    We  wonder  how  many,  besides  him,  of  the  so- 


called  Arabs  which  have  at  different  periods  been 
used  by  our  countrymen  for  stud  purposes,  owed  their 
superiority  to  English  .ancestry.  Verdant's  show- 
name  in  England  was  Magdala. 


CHAP.  III.     THE  ARABIAN  COMPARED    WITH  OTHER    VARIETIES.  193 

suspensory  ligament.  Not  to  speak  too  exclusively  of  racing,  fifty-three  years 
ago  Captain  Home,  of  the  Horse  Artillery,  undertook  to  ride  his  grey  Arab  horse, 
Jumping  Jimmy,  400  miles  in  5  days,  and  accomplished  the  feat  on  the  Bangalore 
race-course,  before  crowds  of  spectators,  with  3  hours  and  5  minutes  in  hand. 
Detailed  accounts  of  this  performance  may  be  read  in  the  Bengal  Sporting 
Magasine  of  1840.  The  feature  which  distinguishes  it  from  the  recent  trials  of 
equine  endurance  in  Germany  is,  that  Jumping  Jimmy  showed  no  signs  of  distress 
either  during  or  after  his  exertions.  At  the  end  of  the  final  lap  of  79  miles,  5 
furlongs,  and  30  yards,  which  was  done  in  19  hours  and  55  minutes,  the  gallant 
grey  was  as  ready  as  ever  for  his  corn.  Any  strong  man  can  override  a  horse, 
and  in  so  doing  make  a  record  which  at  first  sight  shall  seem  extraordinary.  To 
constitute  a  true  test,  it  ought  to  be  provided  that  the  horses  shall  be  so  selected, 
and  so  brought  to  condition,  as  well  as  so  ridden  and  cared  for  during  the  trial,  as 
that  they  shall  neither  suffer  misery  nor  be  rendered  inefficient.  Horsemanship 
should  always  be  associated  with  humanity. 

Some  are  of  opinion  that  the  rough  usages  of  the  desert  life  serve  to  harden 
the  desert  horse.  This  view  pleasantly  or  unpleasantly  revives  the  traditions  of 
the  methods  by  which  ancient  Sparta  made  her  young  men  into  heroes.  There  is, 
at  least,  no  lack  of  facts  behind  it.  The  Arabian  Bedouin  are  accustomed  patiently 
to  endure  all  the  aches  which  life  inflicts  on  them.  So  far  as  can  be  judged  in  the 
absence  of  statistics,  death  at  a  comparatively  early  age  awaits  most  of  them.  No- 
body can  expect  them  to  have  more  pity  on  their  mares  than  on  themselves.  As 
long  as  a  mare  can  gallop,  it  little  matters  whether  she  is  lame  or  sound.  When 
she  breaks  down,  she  is  fired.  The  ragged-coated  cripples  which  we  have  seen 
in  winter  in  the  Bedouin  tent-cities  have  made  us  think  of  the  "  young  noblemen" 
in  Dotheboys  Hall.  We  remember  an  old  mare  which  had  broken  down  so  badly 
that  both  her  fore-fetlocks  touched  the  ground,  and  she  hobbled  along,  perfectly 
happy,  on  the  half-raw  surfaces,  with  a  foal  at  foot.  In  London  she  would  have 
fetched  just  what  the  cat's-meat-man  or  the  sausage-maker  would  have  bidden  for 
her.  On  the  Euphrates  her  wrecked  condition  did  not  greatly  lessen  her  value. 
She  belonged  to  a  strain  of  established  reputation,  and  it  would  have  been  diffi- 
cult to  buy  her.  We  do  not  presume  to  ignore  the  possibility  of  all  these  circum- 
stances helping  to  develop  fortitude  in  the  Arabian  breed — ^just  as  the  rigorous 
winters  of  Europe  tend  to  bring  out  stubborn  endurance  and  other  useful  qualities 
in  mankind.  But,  on  the  whole,  according  to  our  experience,  at  two  years  old  the 
desert  colt  may  safely  be  considered  to  have  had  enough  of  his  native  element. 

"  Courage,  instinct,  and  sagacity  "  are  allied  virtues.  When  it  is  said  that  a 
horse  has  high  courage,  what  is  commonly  meant  is  that  he  is  a  free-goer,  and  full 
of  fire  and  mettle.     But  here  we  shall  understand  by  courage  the  partly  natural  and 

2  E 


194  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

partly  acquired  character  of  fearlessness  of  objects  and  noises.  In  every  consider- 
able number  of  well-bred  yearlings,  even  if  they  are  all  from  the  same  sire  and  dam, 
some  will  be  found  which  are  naturally  courageous,  and  others  which  are  naturally 
timid.  One  of  the  former  class  can  easily  be  persuaded  to  go  up  to  new  and 
threatening  objects.  One  of  the  latter  kind  will  struggle  hard  to  keep  clear  of 
everything  which  is  strange  to  him.  But  while  this  essential  difference  in  different 
horses  is  admitted,  the  influence  of  education  also  claims  recognition.  Timidity 
arising  from  defective  vision  belongs  to  the  province  of  the  veterinary  surgeon. 
The  horse  which  is  apprehensive  merely  through  ignorance  will  show  his  courage 
as  he  grows  in  knowledge.  The  constitutionally  nervous  one  will  more  or  less  con- 
tinue to  be  so,  though  he  will  improve  with  every  year  of  gentle  treatment.  Fol- 
lowing the  manner  of  story-books,  we  shall  here  illustrate  our  remarks  by  means  of 
a  few  histories  drawn  from  real  life.  Of  all  our  horses,  the  one  most  deserving  to 
be  named  for  courage  was  equally  pre-eminent  in  sagacity.  He  was  not  an 
Arabian,  and  still  less  one  of  the  inanimate  kind,  fearing  nothing  because  feeling 
nothing,  but  one  in  whom  the  flutter  of  a  sparrow's  wing  sufficed  to  kindle  the 
fire  of  equine  energy  which  he  inherited  from  Voltigeur.  Captain  White,  as  his 
name  was,  had  not  been  long  in  India  when  one  day  he  chanced  to  meet,  on  a 
bridofe,  the  larsfest  of  all  surviving  terrestrial  animals,  bowlingf  along^  with  a  howdah 
on  its  back.  He  was  so  far  from  showing  any  signs  of  alarm,  that  he  actually 
tucked  up  a  hind-leg  to  keep  it  out  of  the  elephant's  way  in  passing.  Shortly  after 
that  occurrence,  the  honest  yokel  who  had  brought  him  out  from  Yorkshire  obtained 
leave  to  go  to  a  race-meeting.  The  horse  then  quickly  realised  that  he  was  master 
of  the  situation.  On  finding  himself  regarded  by  the  Indians  as  a  kind  of  Sa-hib,^ 
or  imperial  foreigner,  he  was  seized  with  the  humour  of  keeping  the  dusky  stable- 
men at  a  respectful  distance.  He  carried  out  this  little  play  so  perfectly,  without, 
however,  doing  any  one  the  smallest  injury,  that  nobody  could  take  him  out  of  his 
box.  His  friend  the  Yorkshireman  had  therefore  to  be  recalled.  His  first  act, 
after  his  return,  was  to  march  up  to  his  favourite  with  a  bamboo  in  his  hand,  lay 
hold  of  him  by  the  tail,  and  give  him  a  couple  of  whacks  along  the  ribs.  This 
discipline  was  received  with  every  sign  of  penitence,  and  the  next  minute  any  little 
boy  might  have  put  a  bridle  on  him.  He  who  thinks  that  there  is  no  virtue  in  the 
stick  should  come  and  reside  for  a  time  in  the  land  where  these  pages  are  written. 
To  make  it  descend,  like  the  rain,  on  the  just  and  the  unjust,  is  good  neither  for  the 
giver  nor  the  receiver.  But  applied  at  the  right  time,  in  the  right  quantity,  and 
in  the  right  cases,  the  bamboo  corrects  the  transgressor  as  nothing  else  does, 
and  the  weight  of  it  falls   exclusively  on   the   proper  person.     Next  let  us  give 

1   V.  Index  I. 


CHAP.   III. 


THE  ARABIAN  GOBI  PARED    WITH  OTHER    VARIETIES. 


195 


two  instances  in  which  courage,  when  at  first  deficient,  was  developed  through 
experience.  A  few  months  ago  we  received  two  colts  for  both  of  which  Baghdad 
contained  many  new  objects.  One  of  them,  a  son  of  the  great  Chester,  was 
bred  in  the  Sydney  district,  and  the  other  in  Najd.  The  former,  when  he  saw 
a  camel,  especially  one  that  was  couchant  and  braying,  would  bound  to  one  side, 
and  place  a  good  many  yards  of  the  desert  between  him  and  it.  The  latter,  while 
meeting  the  splay-footed  ruminant  as  an  old  messmate,  would  jump  like  a  deer 
rather  than  put  his  foot  in  the  shallowest  rill  or  glittering  piece  of  water.  Both 
these  animals  gradually  ceased  to  be  frightened  at  objects  which  did  not  injure 
them.  The  first  experience  which  made  the  son  of  Chester  look  a  camel  in  the  face, 
was  when  he  observed  one  of  his  own  species  eating  from  the  same  manger  as  the 
long-necked  monster.  After  some  time  he  would  do  the  same  thing  himself  The 
second  example  is  brought  in  to  illustrate  constitutional  nervousness.  It  relates 
to  a  horse  from  Najd  which,  after  beginning  life  in  India  as  a  cavalry  charger,  made 
his  mark  as  a  racer.  The  sound  of  a  piece  of  paper  being  opened  by  the  man  on 
his  back  would  set  him  all  in  a  flutter.  He  was  most  apprehensive  of  strangers  ; 
and  if  even  his  master  tried  to  mount  him  in  an  unfamiliar  uniform,  he  would 
struggle  to  get  away  from  him.  His  suspicions  generally  were  unfounded.  It  was 
no  easy  matter  to  make  him  face  a  harmless  carriage  ;  but  when  firmly  handled,  and 
pressed  with  both  spurs  at  the  right  moment  and  in  the  right  place,^  he  would 
bring  his  rider  handsomely  alongside  of  a  running  boar. 

The  only  conclusion  we  can  come  to,  in  view  of  all  these  facts,  is,  that  Arab 
horses  possess  no  advantages  over  other  horses   in  the  qualities  now  under  notice.- 


1  A  remark  is  suggested  by  this  casual  reference  to 
spurs  and  spurring.  The  best  modern  authorities 
justly  protest  against  the  abuse  of  the  last  resource 
of  horsemen.  It  is  pitiful  to  see  a  man  who  cannot 
ride,  and  whose  feats  are  necessarily  confined  to  a 
beaten  track,  appear  in  spurs.  If  he  were  going  for  a 
walk,  it  would  not  matter,  for  then  he  would  only  cut 
his  boots.  But  it  is  to  be  dreaded  that,  before  his 
return,  he  will  have  lacerated  his  horse,  and,  if  he 
should  chance  to  tumble  off,  scored  his  brand-new 
saddle.  It  may  be  doubted  how  far  it  is  advisable, 
even  for  tirst-rate  riders,  to  arm  their  heels,  as  a  mere 
point  of  dress,  on  all  occasions.  A  good  horse  will  do 
his  best  without  having  his  sides  wounded.  When 
he  flinches,  either  he  is  not  properly  asked  or  he  dis- 
trusts himself  Nevertheless,  the  spur  has  many  uses, 
of  which  he  who  understands  them  certainly  ought  to 
avail  himself. 

-  If  a  graduated  scale  wei'e  to  be  made,  showing 
approximately  the  order  in  which  our  more  or  less 
educated  fellow-animals  rank  in  point  of  intellectual 


capabilities,  the  horse  would  not  stand  at  the  top  of  it. 
His  head  is  large,  but  its  characteristic  form  is  due 
to  the  development  of  the  masticating  apparatus  at 
the  expense  of  the  brain-case,  which,  with  the  brain  it- 
self, is  extremely  reduced  in  size.  A  number  of  horses 
will  contentedly  remain  confined  in  a  field ;  but  if  a 
donkey  be  introduced,  he  will  probably  open  the  gate 
and  march  out,  with  the  whole  party  in  rear  of  him  ! 
Could  anything  be  more  stupid  than  the  habit  which 
horses  have,  when  in  camp,  of  rolling  on  the  ground, 
no  matter  how  cold  the  night  may  be,  till  their  cloth- 
ing is  stripped  off?  Contrast  with  this  the  good  sense 
of  the  elephant,  which,  when  standing  at  his  pickets, 
may  be  seen  pulling  branches  from  a  tree  and  driving 
off  the  flies  with  them.  It  is  just  now  going  the  round 
of  the  Indian  newspapers,  that  a  Commissariat  ele- 
phant which  was  accustomed  to  receive  its  supper 
in  twelve  cakes,  on  one  occasion  when  only  eleven 
cakes  were  produced,  refused  to  touch  them  till 
the  proper  number  was  brought  !  We  cannot  vouch 
for  the  truth  of  this  anecdote.     But  in  campaigns  in 


ig6 


GENERAL    VIE  IV  OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


In  respect  of  sagacity,  and  of  the  courage  which  is  derived  from  it,  the  desert  breed 
has  kept  pace,  within  its  own  Hmits,  with  the  intelligence  of  the  people  who  have 
made  it — and  that  is  all.  It  ma}'  be  that  the  Arabs  are  behind  several  other 
Asiatic  peoples  as  teachers  of  young  horses  ;  but  their  quiet  and  rational  way  of 
managing  them  goes  far  to  make  up  for  this.  They  talk  to  their  four-footed  ser- 
vants as  if  they  were  human  beings.^  They  lead  their  flocks  and  herds,  more  than 
they  drive  them.  Even  their  laden  camels  are  left  free  to  march  in  droves,  instead 
of  being  tied,  every  one  by  its  nose-rope,  to  the  tail  of  another,  according  to  the 
practice,  which  causes  so  many  wounds,  and  adds  so  much  to  the  mortality,  in  Indian 
transport-trains.  The  traveller  between  Baghdad  and  the  Caspian  straps  his  two 
portmanteaus  across  the  back  of  a  galloping  post-horse,  which,  without  being  led  or 
ridden,  instantly  sets  off  with  them ;  and  but  for  an  occasional  tumble,  necessitating 
his  being  pulled  out  by  the  tail  from  under  them,  gallantly  shows  the  way  to  the 
next  station. 

So  far,  the  bat  of  description,  as  the  Persians  say,  has,  on  the  whole,  been  hit- 
ting the  ball  of  superiority  towards  the  goal  of  the  Arabian  breed,  and  away  from 
that  of  its  European  rivals.  More  strokes  remain  to  be  given  ;  but  this  is  a  good 
place  to  break  off. 


India,  when  elephants  were  used  to  level  deserted  vil- 
lages, they  were  always  most  careful  not  to  apply  the 
skull  to  a  piece  of  wall  without  first  ascertaining  that 
no  living  object  was  behind  it.  Students  of  the 
development  theory  should  observe  the  fact,  that  of 
the  two  species  of  animals  the  tuition  of  which  dates 
from  the  remotest  ages — namely,  the  elephant  and 
the  camel — the  former  is  perhaps  the  wisest,  and 
the  latter  one  of  the  silliest,  of  beasts. 


1  In  India  we  adopted  this  practice  to  the  extent  of 
teaching  eveiy  coach-horse  to  come  to  the  walk  or  the 
halt  at  the  word  of  command.  Long  ago  English 
coachmen  freely  used  the  voice,  but  now  even  a  whistle 
from  the  box  is  disapproved  of.  Nevertheless,  con- 
sidering how  commonly  the  propensity  to  run  away 
proceeds  from  fear,  it  is  a  great  advantage,  when  only 
one  or  two  horses  in  a  team  are  seized  with  a  panic, 
to  be  able  thus  to  stop  the  others. 


197 


CHAPTER    IV. 


DEFECTS    OF    THE    ARABIAN. 


THE  fault  which  is  most  commonly  found  with  Arab  horses  is  that  they  are 
too  small. 

In  one  sense  size  is  but  a  secondary  character.  The  town  Arabs  admire  large 
animals,  and  the  Turks  think  that  a  Pasha  ought  to  be  like  an  elephant.  But  the 
Bedouin  Arab  knows  better,  and  when  he  sees  a  Goliath,  will  want  to  know  if 
he  have  a  great  heart. 

As  a  matter  of  course,  inferiority  in  size  bears  against  a  breed  of  horses.  On 
the  race-course  a  first-class  little  one  may  defeat  a  second-rate  big  one ;  ^  but  the 
horse  of  full  and  symmetrical  development,  whose  heart  or  courage  is  true,  easily 
strides  away  from  an  equally  good  little  one.  For  ordinary  riding,  burly  long- 
limbed  men  prefer  horses  which  can  not  only  carry  them,  but  which  look  and  step 
and  feel  as  if  they  could  do  so. 

Admiral  Rous,  in  support  of  the  contention  that  in  1 70  years  the  thoroughbred 
English  horse  has  been  improved  one-eighth  in  power,  speed,  and  stature,  cited 
Stockwell,  Knowsley,  Rataplan,  Thormanby,  and  King  Tom  as  horses  which  could 
have  carried  16  stone  to  hounds,  and  could  stand  up  under  more  weight  than  any 
London  dray-horse.  The  latter  fact,  if,  as  we  assume  it  to  be,  fully  verified,  is 
very  remarkable ;  and  the  power  which  the  compact  little  Arabian  possesses  to 
carry  a  heavy  man  both  far  and  fast  is  equally  so.  Her  Majesty's  17th  Lancers 
rode  Arab  horses  in  the  Indian  Mutiny  campaign.  We  imagine  that  there  are  few 
of  the  survivors,  from  the  gallant  Sir  W.  Gordon  downward,  who,  if  they  had  to 
perform  the  same  work  again,  would  not  desire  to  receive  back  from  shadowland 
the  well-bred   thick-set  horses  of  medium  stature  which  then  carried   them.     The 


1  In   India  horses  under   14  hands  may  often  be  seen  finishing  in  front  of  Walers  and  others  a  hand  or 
more  taller. 


198 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


late  Captain  Nolan's  book  on  cavalry  contains  an  account  of  a  Persian  ^  troop-horse 
which,  though  only  14  hands  and  3  inches  high,  was  ridden  throughout  an  800-mile 
march  in  India  by  a  private  of  the  i8th  Hussars,  who  weighed,  with  his  accoutre- 
ments, 22^  stone!  At  the  crossing  of  the  Kistna — a  broad,  rapid,  and  dangerous 
river — his  rider,  it  is  stated,  scorned  the  ferry-boat;  and,  declaring  that  "a  hussar 
and  his  horse  should  never  part  company " — what  the  latter  said  to  that  is  not 
narrated — gallantly  stemmed  the  current  in  heavy  marching  order. 

Sometimes  it  is  said  that  the  Arabian  horse  cannot  or  will  not  trot,  and  some- 
times that  he  does  not  jump;  but  these  are  random  statements.  Trotting  tends  to 
uncover,  or  perhaps  even  to  rub  off,  the  brown  skin  of  the  unbreeched  Bedouin 
horseman.  It  forms,  we  know,  one  of  the  three  natural  paces  of  the  horse,  but  the 
Arabs  do  not  cultivate  it.  The  desert  mare  springs  all  at  once  from  the  halt  or 
walk  into  a  free-and-easy  hand-gallop,  which  is  too  disconnected  to  be  properly 
called  a  canter. 

As  for  leaping,  one  may  cross  many  a  league  of  the  pathless  desert  without 
the  crystal  stream,  far  less  walls  or  rails,  or  even  a  dry  ditch,  appearing.  When, 
however,  the  Arab  horse  is  taken  elsewhere  and  schooled,  his  thorough  willingness 
may  carry  him  over  fences  which  larger  animals  are  refusing  through  roguery  or 
stubbornness.  In  India  we  once  saw  a  field  of  Australian  horses  in  a  steeplechase 
completely  stopped  by  what  they  had  to  encounter.  Some  fell ;  others  would  only 
jump  what  they  thought  proper ;  and  not  one  ever  passed  the  judge's  box.  After- 
wards, when  their  owners  were  protesting  against  the  course,  a  battery  sergeant- 
major  of  the  Hyderabad  Contingent,  who  happened  to  be  present  on  his  regimental 
horse,  an  Arab  Galloway,  rode  him  over  every  obstacle. 

It  is  less  easy  to  defend  the  Arabian  from  the  charge  of  being  a  careless  walker, 
and  therefore  not  a  good  hack.  His  more  thoroughgoing  admirers  undertake  to 
do  so,  but  they  are  in  the  minority.  Of  course,  the  exceptions  are  not  infrequent. 
Thus  Colonel  Bower,  who  owned  the  famous  racing  Arab,  Child  of  the  Islands,  says 
that,  although  he  was  a  '•  daisy-cutter,"  he  had  been  ridden  over  the  roughest  ground, 
and  had  never  been  detected  in  a  trip.  "  A  pleasanter,  safer  hack,"  it  is  added, 
"  could  not  be."  ^     But  occasional  instances  like  this  only  bear  on  individual  horses. 

To  perceive  the  difference  between  the  movements  of  an  Arab  horse's  fore- 
feet and  those  of  an  approved  English  pleasure-horse,  one  should  first  stand  behind 


'  Persia  possesses,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  no  well- 
established  breed  of  the  blood-horse,  except,  possibly, 
in  a  few  princely  families  ;  and  then,  too  generally, 
the  owner's  death  is  followed  by  the  dispersion  or 
the  neglect  of  his  brood-mares.  A  "  Persian  horse  " 
may  be  by  sire  or  dam,  or  both,  an  Arabian  ;  or  he 
may  be   a   Turku-ma-ni.      Far   more   commonly  he 


merely  is  a  ka-dish  or  a  ya-bti. 

"'  Quoted  in  Stonehenge's  Book  of  the  Horse,  p.  21. 
The  Child  of  the  Islands  (1846-49)  was  a  dark  bay, 
with  black  points,  slight  but  muscular  in  figure — that 
is,  possessing  good  substance  without  weight.  He 
stood  14  hands  2X  inches. 


CHAP.  IV.  DEFECTS    OF   THE  ARABIAN.  199 

the  two  animals  while  they  are  carrying  their  riders  at  a  walk  over  a  dusty  road. 
The  scientifically  bred  one,  it  will  be  noticed,  disturbs  the  surface  no  more  in 
setting  down  than  in  picking  up  a  foot.  The  Arab,  on  the  contrary,  stirs  up 
the  dust  with  his  fore-feet.  His  fore-hand,  instead  of  being  carried  well  forward, 
appears  to  find  a  difficulty  in  getting  out  of  the  way  of  his  hind-quarters.  Next 
observe  the  Arab  horse  while  he  is  trotting.  However  well  he  may  have  been 
taught,  his  action  at  this  pace  has  an  undeveloped  character.  His  is  not  the  musi- 
cal trot  of  the  accomplished  English  stepper,  the  very  sound  of  which  goes  bail 
for  him  that  he  will  not  fall.  It  is  not  that  Arab  horses  are  unsafe.  Apart  from 
accidents,  we  owe  them  only  about  six  falls  in  thirty  years.  Their  power  of  righting 
themselves  in  a  twinkling  after  a  false  step,  so  as  not  to  make  a  downright  stumble, 
commands  admiration.  It  depends  partly  on  constant  practice,  and  partly  on  their 
pluck  and  springiness.  But  there  are  worse  things  than  falls.  Many  a  time  when  an 
Arab  hack  has  been  sprawling  along,  and  scraping  the  road  at  every  rough  place 
with  a  fore-foot,  so  that  occasionally  the  reins  would  be  jerked  over  his  ears,  we 
have  wished  that  he  would  fall  and  be  done  with  it.-^  If  it  had  merely  been  that 
the  Arabian  abroad,  shod  after  a  novel  fashion,  and  played  on,  like  Hamlet,  by  those 
who  "  do  not  know  his  stops,"  was  addicted  to  tripping,  who  could  have  wondered  ? 
But  it  must  be  admitted  that  in  his  native  country  also  he  trips  at  a  walk — the  pace 
of  all  others  at  which  a  horse  ridden  for  health  or  pleasure  should  be  faultless.  At 
first  sight  it  seems  extraordinary  that  a  whole  race  of  horses  should  thus  be  charac- 
terised by  an  unmethodical  style  of  marching ;  but  the  facts  which  have  been  stated 
in  other  contexts  -  about  the  shortcomings  of  the  Bedouin,  equally  as  horse-breeders 
and  as  riders,  sufficiently  explain  it. 

If  any  one  were  to  ask  a  dog  why,  before  he  lay  down,  he  turned  round  and 
round,  he  might  think  it  enough  to  answer,  with  a  faulty  logic  not  unknown  in 
higher  circles,  that  he  always  did  so.  Perhaps  the  Arab  horse  might  offer  the  same 
explanation  of  his  habit  of  tripping.  But,  according  to  some  authorities,  a  trans- 
mitted cause  is  to  be  recognised  in  both  cases, — in  the  dog,  the  instinct  of  making 
a  place  for  himself,  and  clearing  it  of  roughness ;  and  in  the  horse,  peculiarities 
which  are  bred  in  him.  Not  to  mention  such  obvious  causes  as  want  of  condition, 
a  saddle-horse  may  be  an  awkward  walker,  because  naturally  a  sluggard  ;  or  because 
he  is  badly  shaped,  or  has  chronic  disease  of  the  feet  or  shoulders,  or  is  over- 
weighted, or  has  not  been  properly  educated.  If  the  bodily  framework  be  the 
machinery,  temperament  is  the  steam.  Many  splendid  Arabs,  as  well  as  many 
thoroughbred  English  horses,^  while  showing  their  high  breeding  by  a  distinguished 


^  It  is  not  meant  that  this  description  is  appUcable 
to  most  Arabs,  far  less  to  all  of  them.  It  puts  the 
case  at  the  strongest,  and  we  have  owned  but  one  of 


the  breed  which  it  fitted. 


^   V.  ante,  pp.  138  et  139. 

^  For  example.  Touchstone  "  was  very  lazy  at  exer- 


200 


GENERAL    VIEW   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  III. 


Style  of  walking,  have  been  sleepy  movers  till  their  blood  was  warmed.  Such 
never  can  be  clever  hacks.  When  not  born  racers,  their  proper  part  is  to  gallop  as 
leaders  in  a  pleasure-coach.  Conformation  carries  us  back  to  what  has  been  stated 
on  the  subject  of  the  Arab's  thinking  so  much  more  of  blood  than  of  figure.^  When 
a  horse  that  turns  out  his  toes  walks  clumsily,  the  fault  lies  with  the  people  who 
will  use  a  sire  or  a  mare  with  twisted  ankles.  We  shall  speak  further  on  of  the 
Arabian's  shoulders.  But  having  mentioned  crooked  fore-legs,  let  us  here  say 
that  this  malformation  is  perhaps  spreading  in  the  horse-stock  of  the  Arabs.  In 
the  days  when  almost  the  only  Arab  horses  seen  by  us  were  those  which  the  dealers 
brought  to  India,  the  prevalence  among  them  of  twisted  fore-legs  seemed  surprising. 
Subsequently,  on  becoming  acquainted  with  the  Arabs,  and  observing  how  many 
crooked-legged  horses  they  rear,  we  were  more-  inclined  to  compliment  the  importers 
on  their  being  able  to  find  so  many  straight  ones.  Among  the  dlite  of  the  desert 
stallions,  one  may  meet  with  horses  whose  fore-legs  are  like  this  : — ■ 


AS-DAF. 


In  twenty  years  we  have  not  seen  as  many  "  pigeon-toed  "  Arab  horses — that  is, 
those  having  the  fore -feet,  one  or  both,  twisted  inward — as  we  have  seen  in  one 
year  of  the  opposite  or  "dancing-master"  variety.  Opinions  differ  as  to  which 
fault  the  more  interferes  with  true  action.     The  proper  way  to  settle  the  question 


cise,  and  could  hardly  be  kicked  along." — Portraits 
of  Celebrated  Race-Horses,  by  T.  H.  Taunton,  M.A., 


vol.  iii.  p.  158. 
1  V.  ante,  p.  138. 


CHAP.   IV. 


DEFECTS   OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


20 1 


is  to  buy  only  straight-limbed  ones.  When  a  horse  is  a  proved  racer,  or  a 
brilhant  and  accompHshed  hunter,  his  "iDoints"  may  be  disregarded.  But  we 
would  here  say  to  every  young  horseman,  and  especially  every  soldier,  If  you  will 
make  it  a  rule  never  to  choose,  as  a  charger  or  a  remount,  a  horse  that  turns  out, 
or  in,  his  toes,  or  one  of  them,  in  any  considerable  degree,  many  griefs  will  be 
saved  to  you  ;  unless,  indeed,  you  resemble  the  Bedouin  in  their  indifference  to  all 
such  trifles  as  stumbling  and  interfering,  or  are  content  to  have  your  horses  look 
like  posters,  with  boots  strapped  round  their  fetlocks,  to  save  them  from  coming  in 
after  a  march  raw  and  bloody  from  cutting. 


Shoe  turned  up  at  Toe.     (Ground  surface. ) 

In  India,  our  best  cavalry  officers,  both  of  the  combatant  and  veterinary 
branches,  have  sought  for  means  of  improving  the  defective  action  of  the  fore- 
hand in  the  Arabian.  Their  efforts  have  chiefly  resulted  in  the  invention  of 
new  kinds  of  horse-shoes.  Many  years  ago,  Lieut.-CoL,  now  General  Sir  F., 
Fitzwygram,  when  commanding  the  Inniskilling  Dragoons  at  Poona,  recom- 
mended a  shoe  of  the  above  form.^ 


'  V.  Notes  on  Shoeing  Horses, hylAeMt.-CoX.T'itzwygxam.     London:  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.     1S61. 

2  C 


202 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


The  "  turned-up  shoe "  was  closely  connected  with  the  idea  that  the  straight 
toe  causes  horses  to  trip.  It  proceeded  on  the  principle  that  new  fore-shoes  ought 
to  be  shaped  like  the  old  and  worn  ones,  so  as  to  make  the  wear  and  tear  nearly 
even  all  over  the  foot.  Twenty  years  or  so  later,  Veterinary  Lieut.-Col.  Hallen, 
CLE.,  now  Inspector-General  of  the  Civil  Veterinary  Department  in  India,  in- 
vented a  shoe  to  which  he  gave  the  name  of  "Central."^  Its  rationale  wdiS,  that 
as  only  the  "  quarters "  require  protection,  the  toe,  frog,  bars,  and  heel  may  be 
safely  left  to  shape  themselves  through  friction  with  the  ground.  Its  design  will 
appear  from  the  following  diagram  : — 


"  Central  "  Horse-Shoe. 

About  two  years  after  the  birth  of  the  "  Central  Shoe,"  an  anonymous  inventor 
recommended,  as  a  "  great  improvement  on  the  ordinary  shoe,  and  also  on  the 
'Central  Shoe'  advocated  by  Mr  Hallen,"  one  which  is  depicted  opposite.^ 

We  have  tried  the  above  novelties  on  Arab  horses  which  were  addicted  to 
"  toeing."  A  great  objection  to  all  such  contrivances  is  that  ordinary  workmen  can- 
not do  justice  to  them.      In  India,  where  the  European  method  of  shoeing  is  estab- 


1  V.  "  Notes  regarding  a  New  Horse-Shoe,"  by  J. 
H.  B.  Hallen,  Esq.,  in  Journal  of  the  United  Service 


Institute  of  India,  September  1880. 

2  V.  Asian  Newspaper,  Calcutta,  January  16,  18S3. 


CHAP.   IV. 


DEFECTS   OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


203 


lished,  and  every  Englishman  is  a  ruler,  the  horseman  who  is  himself  an  expert 
may  succeed,  with  personal  supervision,  in  having  effect  given  to  his  ideas.  But 
in  other  oriental  lands,  every  workman  regards  the  traditions  of  his  craft  as  a 
part  of  himself  For  a  long  time  we  endeavoured,  at  Baghdad,  to  have  our  horses 
shod  in  the  usual  English  fashion,  instead  of  in  the  manner  described  in  the 
preceding  chapter.     With  that  object,  horse-shoes  and  nails  ^  were  procured  from 


A  Modification  of  the  "Central"  Horse-Shoe. 

Bombay  ;  but  the  result  clearly  showed  the  uselessness  of  casual  efforts  to  disturb 
modes  of  shoeing  which  prevail  in  any  country.  Fancy  shoes  are  at  best  but 
palliatives.  Flat-footed  horses,  and  those  having  "castle-hoofs"  or  "road-scrapers," 
will  always  be  difficult  to  shoe.  New  inventions  are  unnecessary  for  hoofs  which 
are  made  of  good  material,  and  are  properly  shaped  and  properly  set  on.      It  may 


^  In  I'rak,  the  horse-shoe  nails  are  too  brittle  to 
admit  of  their  ends  being  split  and  "clinched"  after 
they  have  come  through  the  crust.  The  hammered- 
down  parts  form  clumsy  projections,  which  are  always 
hitting  the  opposite  fetlock.  Foreign  cavalry  and 
artillery  would  need   to   bring  with   them  not   only 


farriers  but  shoes  and  nails.  The  bony  enlargements 
resembling  small  filberts  which  many  Arab  horses 
have  at  the  inner  and  posterior  corner  of  the  fetlock 
joint,  and  which  often  are  congenital,  attest  the  pre- 
valence of  cutting,  or  brushing,  in  the  Arabian 
variety. 


204 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF  THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


be  said  that,  outside  of  Arabia,  tlie  European  buyers  of  Arab  Iiorses  have  to  take 
them  as  the  jam-bizes  bring  them.  This  is  true,  but  it  is  subject  to  a  limitation. 
There  has  long  been  a  demand  for  large  Arabs  at  Bombay,  Constantinople,  and 
other  centres  ;  and  to  meet  this  call,  upstanding  horses,  which  are  more  or  less 
Arabs,  are  now  collected  in  considerable  numbers.  A  similar  result  would  probably 
be  witnessed  if  foreign  buyers.  Instead  of  listening  to  the  talk  of  the  Arab  dealers, 
would  follow  the  same  general  principles  as  they  do  at  Tattersall's.  Straight 
shoulders,  a  bull  neck,  and  crooked  fore-legs,  are  surely  as  objectionable  in  Arabs 
as  in  other  kinds  of  horses.  More  will  be  seen  of  this  view  in  the  sequel.  There 
is  just  one  other  point  which  has  to  be  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  defects  of 
the  Arabian.  The  purchaser  who  takes  care  to  buy  only  properly-shaped  colts  will 
find  that  their  faults  of  action  are  susceptible  of  improvement.  After  he  has  made 
his  purchase,  let  him,  if  he  have  the  necessary  leisure,  patience,  seat,  and  hands,  not 
begrudge  the  trouble  of  teaching  that  which  is  to  form,  perhaps  for  many  years,  a 
part  of  himself,  to  play  the  same  tune  with  all  four  legs,  at  the  walk,  trot,  and 
canter.  Above  all  things,  let  him  be  as  gentle  as  he  will  find  his  pupil  to  be.  If 
it  be  hard  on  him  to  have  a  raw  horse  under  him,  it  is  harder  on  the  horse  to  be 
suddenly  taken  from  a  nation  of  light  weights,  and  set  to  carry  perhaps  a  cavalry 
major  whose  riding  weight,  thanks  to  a  good  mess  and  Indian  allowances,  exceeds 
that  of  two  desert  Arabs.  For  the  Arabian  horse,  the  "  blessings  of  civilisation  " 
generally  consist  of  over-bitting,  over-weighting,  and  hands  of  iron.  The  wonder 
is,  not  that  the  change  perplexes  him,  but  that  he  does  not  rebel  and  fall  to  kick- 
ing, or,  like  a  horse  of  which  we  lately  read,  lie  down  in  despair.^ 


1  A  History  of  the  Horse,  by  W.  C.  L.  Martin  (1845), 
contains  the  following  anecdote,  which,  although  it 
can  hardly  be  altogether  true,  may  be  partly  so  : 
"The  late  General  Pater,  a  remarkably  fat  man,  pur- 
chased a  charger,  which  all  at  once  betook  itself  to 
lying  down  whenever  the  General  prepared  to  get 
upon  his  back.  Every  expedient  was  tried  without 
success  to  cure  him  of  the  trick  ;  and  the  laugh  was 
so  much  indulged  against  the  General's  corpulency, 
that  he  found  it  convenient  to  dispose  of  his  horse. 
Upwards  of  two  years  had  subsequently  passed,  when 
General  Pater  left  Madras  to  inspect  one  of  the  fron- 
tier cantonments.     The  morning  after  his  arrival,  the 


troops  were  drawn  out ;  and  as  he  had  brought  no 
horses,  it  was  proper  to  provide  for  his  being  suitably 
mounted,  though  it  was  not  easy  to  find  a  charger 
equal  to  his  weight.  At  length  an  officer  resigned  to 
him  a  powerful  horse  for  the  occasion,  which  was 
brought  out  duly  caparisoned  in  front  of  the  line. 
The  General  came  forth  from  his  tent,  and  proceeded 
to  mount,  but  the  instant  the  horse  saw  him  advance 
he  flung  himself  flat  upon  the  sand,  and  neither  blows 
nor  entreaties  could  induce  him  to  rise.  It  was  the 
General's  old  charger,  who  from  the  moment  of  quit-, 
ting  his  service  had  never  once  practised  the  artifice 
until  this  second  meeting ! " 


205 


CHAPTER    V. 


A     SUMMARY. 


I  ^HE  comparison  of  the  Arab's  horse  with  other  people's  horses  from  which 
J-  we  are  now  passing,  at  least  bears  out  the  conclusion  that  in  certain  circum- 
stances, and  for  certain  uses,  the  Arabian  horse  stands  unrivalled.  With  all  his 
faults,  he  is  such  a  horse  as  can  never  be  produced  again.  When  the  ever-widen- 
ing margin  of  European  unrest  and  civilisation  shall  have  extended  over  the  deserts 
of  the  Bedouin,  and  the  breeds  of  Najd  are  as  extinct  as  those  which  furnished  the 
fields  at  Olympia  and  Delphi,  the  world  of  soldiers,  travellers,  and  sportsmen  will 
be  the  poorer. 

The  safe  position  thus  attained  brings  into  prominence  two  familiar  questions  : — 

Do  not  the  merits  of  the  Arabian  breed  warrant  the  anticipation  that  "  a  further 
cross  "  with  it  would  improve  our  English  blood-stock  ? 

And,  apart  from  crossing,  is  it  not  a  perfectly  natural  course  to  transplant 
Bedouin  mares  and  horses  to  other  countries,  with  a  view  to  the  production  of  an 
unmixed  Eastern  race,  under  the  favouring  influence  of  new  conditions,  aided  by 
methodical  selection  ? 

The  object  proposed  in  this  chapter  is  to  collect  and  review  the  salient  facts 
which  bear  on  the  above  two  questions. 


I. — Of  the  Arab  Cross. 

In  previous  passages  we  have  spoken  with  some  reserve  of  the  beneficial 
effects  of  crossing.  On  the  one  hand,  it  has  been  noticed  how,  by  means  of  a  judi- 
cious cross,  a  new  breed,  combining  more  or  less  the  good  qualities  of  several 
breeds,  may  be  founded.  On  the  other  hand,  the  practice  of  the  Arabs  has  been 
held  to  confirm  the  conclusion  that  our  choice  breeds  of  cattle  or  of  poultry,  our  won- 


2o6  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

derful  race-horses,  and  our  endless  varieties  of  high-bred  dogs,  have  been  obtained 
less  by  crossing  and  feeding  than  by  pure  breeding  and  the  repeated  selection  of 
superior  specimens.  This  view  will  be  further  illustrated  in  future  chapters.  Here 
we  offer  but  one  remark,  the  soundness  of  which  is  little  likely  to  be  questioned — 
viz.,  that  a  higher  breed  can  rarely  be  improved  by  crosses  with  an  inferior  one. 
No  one  knows  from  what  quarter  Captain  Byerly  of  the  Boyne  obtained  the 
Eastern  horse  destined,  after  King  William's  Irish  wars  (1689),  to  become  from 
a  regimental  charger  the  direct  ancestor  of  Herod,  Highflyer,  Woodpecker,  Selim, 
Sir  Peter,  Filho  da  Puta,  Bay  Middleton,  and  others  ;  but  it  is  probable  that  the 
foreigner  excelled  our  island  mares  of  that  period  in  those  qualities  which  purity 
of  race  develops.  In  the  previous  chapter  it  was  held  to  be  possible  that  there  still 
remained  in  remote  parts  of  the  British  Islands  neglected  kinds  of  half-hackney, 
half-agricultural  cattle,  for  the  improvement  of  which  it  might  be  advisable  to 
try  well-chosen  Arabian  stallions.  Going  further,  we  readily  grant  that  if  ever 
any  one  bring  forward,  whether  from  Asia  or  Africa,  a  sufficiently  well  -  bred 
horse  or  mare  more  excellent  in  any  considerable  number  of  those  points  on 
which  the  superiority  of  a  race  or  of  an  individual  depends  than  the  best  speci- 
mens of  the  same  class  now  in  our  possession,  then  by  all  means  the  stranger 
should  be  bred  from.  As,  however,  most  practical  men  would  stop  at  this  point — 
that  is,  refuse  to  mate  a  noble  mare  with  a  stallion  of  doubtful  origin — the  utility  of 
the  Arab  cross  in  Europe  must  be  held  to  be  dependent  on  the  circumstances  in 
which  it  is  resorted  to.  Now  as  to  this,  let  us  first  state  that  never  in  India, 
Arabia,  or  any  other  country,  have  we  seen  an  Eastern  horse  which  suggested  the 
idea  that  he  was  capable  of  improving  the  perfected  and  established  breeds  of 
race-horses,  hunters,  or  pleasure-hacks  of  our  islands.  No  one  who  knows  any- 
thing about  it  claims  for  the  Arabian  equality  in  speed  or  racing  form  with  the 
descendants  of  Eclipse.  Some  indeed  go  further  than  the  facts  justify  in  the  way 
of  disparaging  the  Arabian  as  a  race-horse.  His  performances  on  the  Turf  have 
even  been  spoken  of  as  "wretched  exhibitions."  Mr  Blunt,  in  one  of  his  writings,^ 
quotes  this  description,  without  rebutting  it  as  decidedly  and  completely  as  a 
reference  to  the  Indian  racing  calendars  would  have  enabled  him  to  do.  He  admits 
that  "  no  Ku-hai-ld7i  purchased  of  the  Aeniza,  and  imported  into  England,  would 
be  likely  to  run  with  success  against  English  thoroughbreds,  even  at  the  2  stone 
4  lb.  allowed  him  in  the  Goodwood  Cup,  and  over  a  two-and-a-half-mile  course." 
He  would  not  "  recommend  speculators  to  invest  their  money  on  him  at  greater 
weights,  and  over  a  longer  distance."     In  the  next  sentence  he  maintains  that  the 


"The  Thoroughbred  Horse,"  in  Nineteenth  Century,  September  1880,  pp.  416  and  419. 


CHAP.  V. 


A    SUMMARY. 


207 


Arabian  "  nevertheless  is  essentially  a  race-horse,  the  sire  of  race-horses,  and  that 
his  produce,  bred  in  England  for  a  few  generations,  will  be  able  to  hold  their  own 
upon  the  English  Turf — perhaps  more  than  their  own."  Further  on  in  the  same 
article  he  argues  that  the  explanation  of  the  Arabian  horse  now  proving  but  little 
fitted  for  the  arena  of  the  Turf,  lies  in  "  the  circumstances  of  his  desert  breeding."  ^ 
In  so  far  as  this  means  that  the  desert  breed  would  have  yielded  swifter  race- 
horses if  it  had  been  cultivated  by  Englishmen  for  racing,  instead  of,  as  is  actually 
the  case,  by  the  Bedouin  Arabs  for  Al  Ghaz-u,  it  is  incontestable.  But  if  the  facts  be 
examined,  it  will  be  found  that,  taking  public  running  in  India  as  the  criterion,  the 
Arabian  is,  for  his  size,  a  true  race-horse,  equally  in  speed,  endurance,  and  power  of 
carrying  weight.  It  is  not  that  the  stock  of  Najd  is  not  fast,  but  that  the  New- 
market breed  is  incomparably  faster.  Over  the  well-turfed  course  of  Calcutta, 
Arab  horses  have,  in  a  few  rare  instances,  accomplished  two  miles,  under  about 
9  stone,  in  three  minutes  and  forty-five  seconds — i.e.,  at  the  rate  of  fifty-six  and 
a  quarter  seconds  for  each  half  mile.  To  speak  of  an  earlier  period,  we  find  the 
grey  Arab  Crab,  "  a  large,  powerful,  but  rather  coarse  horse,"  and  the  bay  Arab 
Oranmore,  "a  handsome,  small,  slight  of  make,  and  very  blood-like"  one,  contesting 
with  one  another  no  fewer  than  five  heats  of  two  miles,  carrying  8  stone  and  7  lb. 


^  Mr  Blunt  thus  describes  these  circumstances  : 
"  The  desert-bred  Arab  has  had  everything  from  the 
first  against  him.  Starved  before  birth,  he  is  generally 
a  puny  foal,  but  is  nevertheless  weaned  at  a  month 
old,  according  to  the  invariable  Bedouin  practice. 
Even  during  the  first  month  he  is  not  allowed  to  run 
with  his  dam,  being  kept  at  the  tent-ropes,  tied  by 
the  near  hind-leg  above  the  hock  ;  nor  has  he  any 
exercise,  unless  the  tribe  be  on  the  march.  During 
the  next  few  months  he  is  fed  by  the  hand  on  camels' 
milk,  or  on  such  refuse  dates  as  the  owner  can  spare 
him,  or  on  gathered  pasture,  if  pasture  there  be. 
Then  in  his  first  autumn  he  is  turned  out  to  shift  for 
himself,  shackled,  to  prevent  his  being  stolen,  with 
heavy  iron  handcuffs.  As  a  yearling  he  is  like  a 
little  half-starved  cat,  and  he  only  begins  to  grow  in 
his  third  spring.  Then — it  will  be  in  his  second  if  he 
has  been  foaled  in  the  autumn — he  is  mounted,  I  do 
not  say  broke,  for  he  needs  no  breaking,  and,  unless 
he  is  to  be  kept  as  a  stallion  for  the  tribe,  is  sold  to 
the  village  dealers  on  the  edge  of  the  desert.  These 
put  him  into  their  close  and  filthy  stables,  where  he 
generally  sickens  for  a  while,  but  then  grows  fat  and 
sleek,  when,  after  a  sufficient  training  in  such  circus 
tricks  as  the  Turks  delight  in,  he  is  resold  at  an  im- 
mense profit  to  some  Pasha,  Kaim-makam,  or  Ulema, 
as  the  case  may  be,  from  whom  he  finds  his  way 
into  Frank  hands.     During  all  this  time  he  has  prob- 


ably had  not  one  fair  gallop  in  his  life,  and  has  hardly 
stretched  his  legs  even  in  a  loose-box,  for  he  is  kept 
hobbled  day  and  night.  At  six,  seven,  or  eight  years 
old,  when  all  his  bones  are  set  to  short  paces,  and  he 
has  served  maybe  sotne  seasons  at  the  stud,  he  is 
suddenly  put  by  his  new  owner  into  training,  and 
disappoints  him  because  he  cannot  win  a  common 
country  race  against  English  thoroughbreds.  ...  It 
is  therefore,  I  say,  difficult  to  judge,  by  such  perform- 
ances as  we  have  seen,  of  all  that  the  Arab  is  capable 
of  as  a  race-horse."  The  fault  of  all  this  is,  that  it 
includes  all  the  horses  of  all  the  Arabs  in  one  de- 
scription. It  has  already  been  shown,  and  will 
further  appear  hereafter,  that  prior  to  export  almost 
every  Arab  horse  has  a  different  history.  There 
may  be  cases  in  which  well-bred  horses  which  have 
never  been  galloped  are  sent  to  India.  Such  ani- 
mals, even  when  they  possess  racing  form,  evince 
their  lack  of  early  advantages  by  disappointing  their 
admirers  for  the  first  year  or  two  of  training,  and 
ultimately  winning  a  good  race.  But  these  are  the 
exceptions.  Most  of  the  Arab  horses  which  have 
run  well  in  India  have  come  to  the  post  as  colts, 
and  must  previously  have  done  plenty  of  work  in 
their  native  places.  The  "village  dealers  on  the 
edge  of  the  desert"  are  not  Turks,  and  they  im- 
part no  "  circus  tricks "  to  the  horses  which  they 
purchase. 


2o8  GENERAL    VIEW  OF  THE   ARABIAN.  BOOK  in. 

each,  in  the  Bengal  Cup,  on  the  9th  of  January  1845.  The  bay  won  the  first  heat, 
and  the  grey  the  third  and  fifth  heats,  wliile  the  second  and  the  fourth  were  dead 
heats.  In  the  first  heat,  strong  running  was  made  only  for  the  mile  home;  and  it 
was  run  in  one  minute  and  fifty-two  seconds,  and  won  by  a  head.  In  the  second 
heat,  again,  they  made  play  only  for  a  mile ;  and  the  heat  was  run  in  half  a  second 
less  than  the  previous  one.  The  third  heat,  which  was  won  by  a  neck,  was  run  in 
three  minutes  and  fifty-six  seconds.  In  the  fourth  heat,  the  real  racing  was  confined 
to  the  last  half  mile,  which  was  accomplished  in  fifty-four  seconds.  The  deciding 
heat  was  won  by  the  larger  horse — Heenan  wearing  out  Tom  Sayers.  Many 
similar  instances  might  be  given  tending  to  exhibit  the  racing  qualifications  of  the 
Arabian  in  a  very  favourable  light.  It  is  only  when  such  records  are  compared 
with  modern  Newmarket  form  ^  that  the  difference  is  evident  between  a  com- 
paratively diminutive  horse  and  one  which,  owing  to  his  more  lengthy  stroke,  de- 
rived from  his  superior  size,  is  able,  while  galloping  within  his  rate,  to  keep  the 
other  stretched  at  the  extremity  of  his  stride.  Long  ago,  when  our  countrymen  in 
India  lived  more  than  is  now  the  case  in  a  world  of  their  own — which  was,  on  the 
whole,  a  very  pleasant  world — the  idea  of  winning  the  Goodwood  Cup  with  an  Arab 
horse  grew  and  ripened  in  many  an  old-fashioned  head.  In  1847,  when  that  great 
race  was  won  by  The  Hero,  carrying  9  stone  6  lb.,  the  best  Arab  horse  of  his  time 
in  India,  the  blue-grey  Monarch,  though  "turned  loose"  at  5  stone  4  lb.,  was  among 
those  which,  "panting,  toiled  after  him."  Again,  in  1861,  one  of  the  stoutest  and 
bravest  of  the  desert  lineage — Dr  Campbell's  bay  horse  Copenhagen,  a  winner  twenty- 
two  times  in  India — was  trained  at  Newmarket  for  the  same  severe  two-and-a-half- 
mile  ordeal.  An  officer  of  the  Indian  Irregular  Cavalry,  who  at  that  time  happened 
to  be  in  England,  thus  described,  in  the  Oriental  Sporting  Magazine  for  September 
1870,  a  glimpse  which  he  obtained  of  this  Eastern  candidate  : — 

"  As  Copenhagen  was  then  well  forward  in  his  preparation,  we  determined  to  have  a  trial, 
so  that  I  might  be  able  to  tell  Dr  Campbell  what  I  saw.  So  I  got  on  the  filly  Farfalla,  riding 
about  10  St.  7  lb.,  and  the  lightest  of  the  Sharps  on  Copenhagen — the  latter  getting  at  least  4  st. 
the  best  of  the  weights,  not  to  mention  allowance  for  age.  We  went  the  two  middle  miles  ; 
and  the  filly,  then,  I  think,  only  a  three-year-old,  and  by  no  means  a  first-class  animal,  lost  him. 
He  could  not  live  with  her  from  the  first  hundred  yards,  and  the  further  we  went  the  further 
the  filly  cantered  away  from  him.  .  .  .  Had  Copenhagen  started  for  the  Cup,  he  would  have 
reached  the  T.Y.C.  start-post  about  the  time  Tim  Whiffler  caught  the  judge's  eye." 

If  in  our  day  any  one  were  to  propose  to  enter  an  Arab  at  Goodwood,  his 
friends  would  give  him  their  vote  and  interest  for  Hanwell. 


^  E.g.^  two  miles  and  five  furlongs  in  four  minutes 
and  ten  seconds  ;  two  miles  in  three  minutes  and 
twenty-seven  seconds  ;  one  and  a  half  mile  (Robert 
the  Devil  and  Bend  Or)  in  two  minutes  and  thirty- 


nine  and  a  half  seconds  ;  one  mile  (Brag,  in  the 
Brighton  Cup)  in  one  minute  and  thuty-seven  and 
four-fifth  seconds. 


CHAP.  V. 


A    SUMMARY. 


209 


The  claim  of  the  Arabian  to  be  accepted  as  a  sire  for  hunters,  pleasure-hacks, 
and  coach-horses  may  be  dealt  with  in  a  similar  manner.  It  is  well  known  how 
specialised  these  several  groups  of  horses  now  are  in  the  British  Islands.  There 
are  men  among  us  who  will  write  a  cheque  in  four  figures  for  a  perfectly  satisfactory 
hunter  or  park  horse,  and  never  ask  the  former  to  serve  as  a  hack,  or  the  latter  to 
go  out  of  a  walk.  No  such  demand,  it  is  needless  to  observe,  exists  within  reach  of 
the  i\rabs,  nor  do  they  know  anything  of  these  distinctions.  What,  we  would 
inquire,  has  produced  the  difference,  in  looks,  action,  and  manners,  between  the 
winners  of  prizes  in  the  blood  riding-horse  class  at  our  great  shows  this  last  half 
centurj^  and  the  herds  of  semi-feral  horses  which,  in  Australasia  and  South  America, 
are  boiled  down  for  the  sake  of  their  hides  and  tallow  ?  Why,  what  but  the  selec- 
tion, generation  after  generation,  of  those  specimens  which  most  nearly  approach  an 
accepted  model.  And  it  appears  problematical  how  far  kinds  which  are  without  a 
rival  in  their  special  business  of  topping  fences  and  galloping  through  plough-lands 
under  welter  weights,  or  other  kinds  which,  in  harness,  suggest  the  "  wings  of  the 
winds,"  admit  of  being  made  better,  through  admixture  with  strains  in  which  those 
qualifications  are  less  developed.  An  old-fashioned  Yorkshireman  once  observed, 
in  India,  of  our  team  of  Arabs,  that  they  were  all  very  well  as  toys,  but  that  when 
he  should  take  to  bantam-cock-fighting  he  would  ride  and  drive  Arabs.  And  truly, 
who  can  challenge  the  abstract  superiority  of  long  and  free-actioned  horses  over 
short  ones  ?  It  is  indisputable  that  week  after  week  there  are  sold  at  Tattersall's 
so-called  hunters  which  are  more  likely  than  many  an  Arab  pony  to  hang  up  their 
riders  in  the  first  big  place.  But,  speaking  of  the  type  of  hunter  which  is  to  be 
seen  in  the  Shires  and  elsewhere,  something  extraordinary  must  happen  before 
the  start-to-finish  hunting  men  of  England  exchange  their  great-striding,  long- 
shouldered  weight -carriers,  whether  thoroughbred  or  what  is  technically  called 
half-bred,  for  Arabs  or  the  produce  of  Arabs. ^ 


1  These  observations  are  wholly  general.  They  are 
not  intended  to  discredit  the  records  concerning  the 
feats  of  Arabs,  and  the  produce  of  Arabs,  in  English 
hunting-fields,  which  have  been  published.  It  is 
needless  to  say  that  a  great  deal  depends  on  the 
rider.  There  are  men,  and  women  too,  who  can  put 
steam  into  a  donkey,  especially  when  the  hounds  are 
running.  Apart  from  all  that,  the  question  is  vei-y 
much  one  of  big  horses  versus  little  horses.  Accord- 
ing to  "  The  Druid,"  one  of  the  past  generation  of  the 
Childes,  of  Kinlet,  in  Shropshire,  contrived  to  beat 
all  Leicestershire  on  a  half-bred  Arab.  In  such 
cases  there  is  room  for  doubt  on  two  points.  How 
much  of  the  superiority  of  the  half-bred  hunter  de- 
pended on  his  Eastern,  and  how  much  of  it  on  his 


English,  ancestry  ?  And  further,  will  the  oriental  part 
of  the  pedigree  stand  the  test  of  investigation  ?  Many 
years  ago,  when  the  fame  of  Mr  C.  Davis's  reputed 
half-bred  Arab  hunter,  Hermit,  was  more  talked  of  in 
England,  over  the  mahogany,  than  is  probably  now 
the  case,  a  portrait  of  his  dam,  the  supposed  Arabian, 
was  shown  to  us.  To  our  eye,  she  was  an  Indian 
stud-bred — i.e.,  practically  of  English,  and  possibly 
thoroughbred  English,  stock.  The  account  which 
was  given  of  her,  that  she  had  carried  a  regimental 
trumpeter  in  India,  hardly  bore  out  the  idea  that  she 
was  an  Arab.  India  is  as  great  a  mine  of  horse-flesh 
as  it  is  a  museum  of  human  races  ;  and  English  cav- 
ali-y  regiments,  when  serving  in  it,  obtain  remounts 
from  many  different  quarters. 


2  D 


2IO  GENERAL    VIEW  OF  THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

A  question  here  occurs.  Notwithstanding  the  wide  diffusion  of  Arab  horses, 
or  so-called  Arab  horses,  in  I'rak  and  Syria,  India,  Egypt,  and  the  Western  hemi- 
sphere, is  there  not  some  reason  to  believe  that  the  pure  ore  of  the  breed  is  inacces- 
sible to  foreigners  ?  Obviously  it  is  idle  to  compare  the  Arabian  with  other  varie- 
ties, if  it  be  left  open  for  any  one  who  pleases  to  say  that  the  authentic  Ku-hai-lan 
is  as  unknown,  outside  of  certain  inner  circles,  as  the  fabled  breed  of  volant  Pegasus. 
Such  an  idea  fascinates  minds  of  the  imaginative  order,  and  some  of  those  who 
have  visited  Central  Arabia  have  played  up  to  it.  So  many  vague  impressions  exist 
on  this  subject,  that  it  is  necessary  here  to  consider  it.  The  chief  supporter  of  the 
theory  that  he  who  has  not  entered  Najd  is  but  little  likely  to  have  seen  the  genuine 
Najdi  horse  is  Mr  W.  G.  Palgrave,  whose  book  has  more  than  once  been  quoted 
in  the  preceding  pages.  Several  of  his  own  descriptions  bear  against  the  position 
which  he  takes  up  on  this  point.  For  instance,  in  Chapter  V.  he  mentions  that, 
when  he  and  his  companions  were  approaching  the  township  of  Bu-rai-da,  in  Najd, 
they  were  overtaken  by  a  band  of  travellers,  in  which  was  a  "  runaway  negro  con- 
ducting four  horses  destined  to  pass  the  whole  breadth  of  Arabia,  and  to  be  shipped 
off  at  Ku-wait,  on  the  Persian  Gulf,  for  Indian  sale."  The  reader  is  not  left  to 
imagine  that  the  man  had  stolen  the  horses,  though  thefts  of  this  nature  are  not 
infrequent.  The  following  page  discloses  that  "  a  rich  artisan  of  [Jabal]  Sham- 
mar  had  entrusted  them  to  him  ; "  in  connection  with  which  statement  the  author 
explains  that,  although  "  more  than  half  the  export  of  Arab  horses  to  Bombay 
passes  by  the  seaport  of  Ku-wait,  .  .  .  the  animals  themselves  are  generally 
from  the  north  of  Arabia  or  the  Syrian  desert,  and  of  real  Arab,  though  not 
of  Najdian,  breed."  As  to  this,  we  do  not  know  what  "real  Arab"  means,  if 
it  do  not  denote  the  "Najdian"  breed.  The  same  writer  makes  the  following 
ill-weighed  statements  in  his  article  "  Arabia  "  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica, 
vol.  ii.   p.    241  : — 

"  Nor  is  a  horse — or,  a  fortiori,  a  mare — ever  disposed  of  [in  Najd  itself]  by  sale ;  gift, 
war-capture,  or  legacy  being  the  only  recognised  methods  of  transfer  where  a  genuine  full-blood 
is  concerned.  Consequently,  no  commercial  export  of  Najdi  horses  has  ever  been  established  ; 
and  whoever  professes  to  sell,  or  boasts  of  having  bought,  one,  may  be  unhesitatingly  set  down 
as  either  deceived  or  deceiving.  In  three  manners,  however — two  occasional  merely,  and  one 
customary — has  the  Najdi  breed  been  to  a  certain  extent  transplanted  beyond  the  actual 
limits  of  Arabia.  The  first  of  the  occasional  or  chance  means  ...  is,  the  fortune  of  war.  .  .  . 
Secondly,  a  few  thoroughbred  Najdis  have  crossed  the  frontier  as  presents ;  .  .  •  but  mares 
are  never  given  away  thus,  only  stallions.  The  third,  and  customary,  method  is,  by  the 
admixture  of  the  race.  Najdi  stallions  are  yearly  hired  out  by  their  owners,  and  sent  into  the 
pastures  of  Jabal  Shammar,  of  Syria,  and  even  of  Mesopotamia,  there  to  breed  with  the  mares 
of  those  countries  belonging  to  the  Arabs  of  Shammar,  or  the  Aeniza,  or  the  Ru-wal-la  tribes 
of  Syria  and  the  like.     These  mares  are  themselves  of  Arab  though  not  of  Najdi  stock,  the 


CHAP.   V. 


A    SUMMARY.  211 


proportion  of  good  blood  varying  in  them  from  a  half  up  to  three-fourths  nearly  ;  but  none  are 
of  absolutely  pure  race.  .  .  .  These  are  the  breeds  from  which  European  stables,  even  regal  and 
imperial,  have  often  obtained  a  supply  of  noble,  but  never  absolutely  pure-blooded,  animals  ; 
frequently  at  prices  proportioned  to  the  imagined  difficulties  of  the  purchase,  or  the  affected 
unwillingness  of  the  cunning  owner  (Arabs  are  very  cunning)  to  part  with  his  beast.  The  best 
market  for  these  mixed  breeds  is  at  Baghdad  ;  the  second  is  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  town 
of  Hama,  in  Syria  ;  inferior  animals  are  sent  to  the  port  of  Ku-wait  on  the  Persian  Gulf,  whence 
they  are  shipped  for  India." 

All  this  is  very  misleading.  Najd  contains  too  many  traders  for  even  the 
smallest  of  its  valuable  products  to  be  tabooed.  If  there  had  been  no  commercial 
outlet  for  the  several  thousands  of  colts  which  are  foaled  every  year  in  the  Arab 
peninsula,  their  owners  would  not  have  known  what  to  do  with  them.  Restricting 
the  view  for  the  moment,  with  Palgrave,  to  "  chiefs  and  individuals  of  considerable 
wealth  and  rank,"  we  may  fairly  allow  to  Muhammad  ibnu  'r  Ra-shid,  of  Jabal 
Sham-mar,  at  least  five  hundred  head  of  mares,  for  himself  and  his  retinue.  Let 
it  be  estimated  that  in  every  year  one  hundred  of  these  run  empty,  while  two  hun- 
dred bear  colts  and  two  hundred  bear  fillies.  In  ten  years  that  would  burden  him 
with  two  thousand  consumers  of  harvests,  each  more  or  less  requiring  attendance, 
seeing  that  the  ri-jd-jil,  or  Men,  who  mount  with  him,  are  mare-riders.  There  is 
plenty  of  evidence  as  to  the  manner  in  which  overstocking  is  obviated.  Thus  it 
has  already  appeared  how  freely  both  the  colts  and  fillies  are  utilised  in  the  gift- 
making  process.^  And  we  can  confirm  from  actual  observation  the  fact  stated  by 
Doughty,  that  the  Ha-yil  chief  is  not  above  recovering  a  part  of  the  expenses  of  his 
establishments  by  sending  batches  of  colts  to  India,  to  be  sold  there,  or  perhaps 
exchanged  for  Martini- Henry  rifles.  It  is  not  asserted  that  the  younglings  which 
he  thus  distributes  invariably  are  of  the  highest  class  ;  but  a  few  of  them  must  be 
so,  were  it  only  through  accident.  In  the  Bombay  sale-stables  we  have  seen  better 
colts  of  the  Amir's  forwarding  than  the  best  of  those  which  have  been  sent  by  him 
in  our  time  as  presents  to  Baghdad  Pashas.  Not  to  take  further  note  of  person- 
ages, it  is  impossible  to  approach  Najd  without  perceiving  that  its  horse-stock  passes 
out  of  it  through  numerous  channels.  Here,  as  everywhere,  the  force  of  trade  acts 
like  a  colossal  pump.  All  the  nomads  in  Central  Arabia  find  it  as  convenient  as 
the  Shekh  of  Jabal  Sham-mar  does  to  sell  the  colts  which  they  do  not  require. 
The  buying  of  these,  when  very  young,  from  the  desert-scourers,  is  a  favourite 
speculation  of  the  oasis-dwellers  ;  and  the  best  of  them  ultimately  go  to  India  or 
Egypt.     The  mares  and  fillies,  as  is  well  known,  do  not  fall  into  these  trade  courses, 


1  V.  ante,  p.  47. 


212  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

as  the  colts  do.  But  it  is  quite  another  thing  to  leap  to  the  conclusions  that  Najdi 
mares  "  are  never  given  away  as  presents,"  and  that  the  pastures  of  Mesopotamia 
contain  no  mares  which  are  "  of  absolutely  pure  race."  Such  statements  involve  an 
ignoring  of  the  plainest  facts  ;  for  example,  the  fact  that  hordes  of  the  Bedouin  are 
continually  passing  between  Middle  and  Northern  Arabia.  Goers  and  comers 
of  this  description  may  frequently  leave  their  mares  in  Najd,  but  it  is  impossible 
to  suppose  that  they  invariably  do  so.  And  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the 
mare  of  perfect  pedigree,  when,  with  her  rider,  or  as  a  gift,  a  booty,  or  a  marriage 
portion,  she  is  taken  out  of  Najd  into  Sha-ml-ya,  may  there  find  many  of  her  own 
true  kindred  which  have  gone  before  her.  The  trade  statistics,  so  to  call  them, 
which  appear  in  the  above-quoted  passage  are  only  fitted  to  produce  wrong  impres- 
sions. A  dozen  other  places  are  equally  entitled  with  Baghdad  and  Hama  to  be 
considered  "  the  best  markets  for  mixed  breeds  "  of  Arabian  horses.  Every  consid- 
erable town,  from  the  Armenian  mountains  to  the  Gulf  of  Persia,  attracts  to  itself  the 
saleable  colts,  mixed  and  pure,  good,  bad,  and  middling,  of  the  adjacent  districts,  as 
surely  as  it  does  other  rural  produce.  And  similarly,  the  representation  that  "  in- 
ferior animals  are  sent  to  the  port  of  Ku-wait  on  the  Persian  Gulf,  whence  they  are 
shipped  to  India,"  is  true  as  far  as  it  goes,  and,  at  the  same  time,  very  inadequate. 
Ku-wait,  or  Grane,  is  the  chief  port  of  Najd,  at  all  events  for  horses.  It  is  only 
nine  desert  marches  from  Ha-yil.  Its  inhabitants  preserve,  in  spite  of  the  Turks, 
much  of  the  Arab  character.  The  collecting  of  colts  from  inner  Arabia,  and  from 
the  Ae-ni-za  nation  of  Sha-mi-ya,  perhaps  ranks  as  their  principal  industry.  Ad- 
mittedly, many  of  these  animals  are  "inferior."  But  every  year  a  certain  number 
come  forward  which  are  of  the  flower  of  the  stock  of  Najd.  Indeed,  we  do  not 
know  of  an  easier  method  in  which  a  European  might  see  and  buy  Najdi  horses 
prior  to  export  than  by  stationing  himself,  from  June  to  September,  in  the  well- 
oasis  of  Bar-ja-st-a,  a  three  days'  journey  out  of  Ku-wait.  He  would  there  be  on 
the  caravan  route  which  leads  from  Najd  to  the  sea-coast.  Larger  and  smaller 
batches  of  Bedouin  horses  would  be  led  or  ridden  past  the  spot  in  which  he  was 
ruralising.  But  even  there  he  would  have  to  be  careful,  as  these  caravaners  buy 
colts  as  they  proceed  ;  and  not  every  horse  which  comes  from  Najd  is  a  Najdi,  or 
even  an  Arabian. 

A  view  akin  to  Palgrave's  has  been  recorded  by  another  of  our  countrymen. 
The  late  Mr  Skene,  her  Majesty's  Consul  at  Aleppo,  writing  more  than  thirty 
years  ago,  advised  a  correspondent  that  there  was  "blood  and  stride  in  the  desert 
which   has  never  been  seen  out  of  it."^      What  does  that  mean?     For  example. 


See  his  letter  published  in  Spot-ting  Review  for  March  1864. 


CHAP.  V. 


A    SUMMARY. 


213 


are  we  to  believe  that  Mr  Darley's  treasure-trove,^  the  progenitor  in  the  female 
line  of  Herod,  was  inferior  to  other  members  of  the  same  family  which  were  to  be 
found  in  Najd  or  on  the  Euphrates  ?  Let  no  one  imagine  that  it  was  so.  In  order 
to  understand  the  Consul's  statement,  it  is  necessary  to  go  behind  it  and  take  note 
of  the  circumstances  which  account  for  it.  Mr  Skene  was  a  devoted  admirer  equally 
of  the  Arabs  and  of  their  horses.  The  lore  of  the  black  tents  filled  his  head  in  the 
same  ratio  in  which  it  emptied  his  pocket.  He  wound  up  his  letter  by  intimating 
that,  through  helping  the  Arabs  in  their  business  with  the  Turkish  Pashas,  pre- 
venting oppression,  and  enabling  them  to  trade  in  safety  with  English  exporters  of 
wool,  he  was  "perhaps  the  only  one  who  had  succeeded"  in  getting  them  to  sell  at 
long  prices  -  a  first-class  horse  or  mare.  It  is  unnecessary  to  say  more  on  the  subject 
of  these  representations  than  what  may  be  safely  said  generally  of  assertions  on  the 
part  of  any  one,  that  he  is  able  to  accomplish  what  perhaps  no  other  person  has  ever 
accomplished.  Misled  in  some  measure  by  printed  pages,  and  in  some  measure  by 
the  imagination,  we  have  been  trying,  for  thirty  years,  to  call  from  the  desert's  "  vasty 
deep  "  not  spirits  but  peerless  coursers  ;  and,  so  far,  the  mere  pursuit  has  had  to 
satisfy  us.  Not  only  do  all  the  facts  refute  the  argument  that  Arabia  contains  better 
colts  than  those  which  she  distributes,  but  they  go  further.  They  show  that  every 
desert  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge  is  so  extensively  stripped  of  its  best  blood- 
horses,  that  not  many  likely  colts  of  from  three  to  five  years  old  remain  In  the  hands 


1  Major  Upton  has  stated,  in  his  Gleanings  from 
iJie  Desert  of  Arabia  (p.  42),  that  there  are  docu- 
ments in  the  Aleppo  Consulate  relating  to  the  Darley 
Arabian  ;  but  our  Aleppo  colleague  informs  us,  after 
a  diligent  search  in  his  archives,  that  such  is  not  the 
case.  This  is  not  here  alluded  to  as  if  it  threw  any 
doubt  on  the  Darley's  history  (v.  ante,  pp.  138  et  165, 
and  f  n.  2),  but  merely  to  show  the  precariousness  of 
hearsay.  Among  the  Arabs  all  things  are  told  by 
word  of  mouth  :  a  statement  has  but  to  be  heard  or  an 
incident  witnessed  in  order  to  be  bruited  from  Dan 
to  Beersheba  ;  and  the  horizon  of  men's  imaginations 
is,  besides,  illimitable.  Another  illustration  of  this 
presents  itself  in  connection  with  the  Darley.  Both 
Major  Upton  and  Mr, Blunt  have  passed  it  on  to  us 
that  he  belonged  to  the  strain  which  is  called  Rasu  H 
Fi-dd-wij  whereas  Mr  Darley  wrote  of  him  that  he 
was  "  of  the  most  esteemed  race  among  the  Arabs, 
both  by  sire  and  dam,  and  the  name  is  called  Man- 
nicka"  {v.  supra,  p.  165  in  fn.  2).  Mi'-ni-ki,  or  McC- 
na-ki  (from  a  root  meaning  long -necked,  whence 
also  "Sons  of  Anak"),  is  known  to  eveiy  dabbler  in 
desert  pedigrees.  In  the  case  of  Arabians  of  estab- 
lished lineage,  a  distinctive  adjunct,  like  the  second 
name  in  plants,  always  follows  stock  names  of  the 


class  of  Mi'-ni-ki.  But  either  this  escaped  i\Ir  Darley, 
or  his  Yorkshire  senses  were  but  little  exercised  over 
the  Bedouin  nomenclature.  The  name,  as  well  as  the 
strain,  of  Mi'-ni-ki  found  its  way  into  our  stud-book 
with  the  Darley.  A  "  Manica,"  foaled  in  1707,  figured 
among  his  immediate  progeny,  side  by  side  with 
Aleppo  (171 1),  Almanzor  (1713),  and  Flying  Childers, 
in  that  not  always  to  be  relied  on  record. 

-  The  prices  which  Mr  Skene  quoted  as  those  at 
which  he  would  undertake  to  procure  really  first-class 
Arabians  from  the  Bedouin  were  ^300  a-head  for 
mares  and  ;/j2oo  a-head  for  horses.  A  European 
gentleman  in  Bombay  took  advantage  of  his  readi- 
ness thus  to  oblige  his  friends.  About  1862  a  num- 
ber of  Mr  Skene's  selections  passed  through  Baghdad 
on  the  way  to  India.  There  were  no  mares  among 
them  ;  and  although  mares  afterwards  followed,  such 
were  probably  intended  more  for  breeding  than  for 
racing.  At  all  events,  no  fillies  ever  distinguished 
themselves  in  the  importer's  colours  on  Indian  courses. 
Several  colts  did  so  ;  but  the  stride  which  they  ex- 
hibited was  not  superior  to  that  of  hundreds  of  other 
Arab  horses  which  have  reached  India  through  the 
usual  trade  channels. 


214 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


of  their  breeders.  If  England  possesses  too  many  stud-horses,  Arabia  retains  too 
few.  One  may  visit  a  considerable  encampment  of  the  Ae-ni-za  and  see  no  unweaned 
colts,  except  a  few  reserved  ones,  and  those  which  the  dealers  will  not  buy.  The 
stock  which  these  people  always  have  with  them  chiefly  consists  of  well-tried  mares, 
aged  stallions,  and  the  rising  fillies. 

The  mention  of  fillies  suggests  a  different  line  of  Inquiry.  Many  hold  the 
opinion  that  if  the  Arabian  blood  is  fitted  further  to  improve  the  established  breeds 
of  Europe,  the  desert  mare  should  be  sought  for  in  preference  to  the  desert  stallion. 
About  twenty  years  ago  a  demand  for  Arab  horses  as  sires  prevailed  in  the  Aus- 
tralasian colonies.  The  idea  of  obtaining  a  second  Satellite,  the  Darley  Arabian  of 
the  Antipodes,  excited  the  imagination  of  the  horse-breeders  and  sportsmen  of  New 
South  Wales  and  Victoria.  At  the  request  of  a  much-esteemed  friend  in  the  former 
colony — the  late  Mr  James  White  of  Sydney — we  procured  for  him  at  different 
times  between  1869  and  1875  four  carefully  chosen  Arabian  horses.  One  of 
these  made  a  good  mark,  under  the  name  of  A-mir,  in  stud-book  annals.  In  1881 
Mr  White  wrote  that  A-mir's  stock  "  had  proved  unequalled "  as  light  harness- 
horses ;  and  that  a  pair  of  them  had  elicited  "the  praises  of  one  of  the  greatest 
authorities  in  England  on  the  horse-supply  question,  who,  when  he  saw  them  being 
driven  by  a  lady  in  Sydney,  said  that  they  would  readily  bring  a  thousand  guineas 
in  London."  But  A-mir,  who,  by  the  way,  was  closely  inbred,  never  sired  a  race- 
horse, or  a  really  good  hack,  in  spite  of  the  excellent  opportunities  of  doing  so  which 
Mr  White  afforded  to  him.  Nevertheless,  Arabs  claiming  high  character  continued 
to  make  their  appearance  in  Australia.  The  local  horse-dealers  who  went  to  India 
brouo-ht  back  several  of  those  which  had  run  well  at  Calcutta  ;  and  at  least  one 
pastoral  Croesus  spared  no  expense  to  obtain  specimens  which  had  been  specially 
selected  in  Sha-mi-ya.  But  it  does  not  appear  that  any  improvement  was  thus 
effected  in  the  thoroughbred  strains  of  the  colonies.  Public  opinion  in  that  quar- 
ter would  appear  to  have  now  undergone  a  change.  In  1885  one  of  the  leading 
horse-breeders  in  New  South  Wales  wrote  to  us  saying  that  the  great  strides 
made  by  his  adopted  country  in  the  production  of  blood-stock  ^  discouraged  the  idea 
that  there  were  now  any  better  sires  in  Arabia  than  the  descendants  of  Whisker 
and  Satellite,  but  that  perhaps  room  existed  for  a  further  trial  of  really  first-class 
Bedouin  mares.  In  the  same  letter  he  expressed  his  readiness  to  pay  a  thousand 
guineas,  or  more   if  necessary,  for  one  such   mare.      His   impression  was  that  the 


1  A  little  more  than  a  century  ago  the  rich  virgin 
prairies  of  Australasia  did  not  support  a  single  horse. 
When  the  first  fleet  sailed  into  Sydney  harbour,  in 
January  1788,  there  were  landed  one  stallion,  three 
mares,  and  three  colts.     It  was  not  till  1825  that  the 


Australasian  colonies  received  their  first  thoroughbred 
mare,  Manto,  though  before  her  several  thoroughbred 
stallions  had  been  imported.  Thus  the  Australian 
blood-horse  cannot  be  said  to  date  back  for  as  much 
as  eighty  years. 


CHAP.  V. 


A    SUMMARY. 


215 


desert  practice  of  selling  the  colts  and  keeping  the  fillies  resulted  in  the  Arabian 
mare  generally  being  superior  in  size  and  swiftness  to  the  Arabian  horse.  At 
Baghdad  many  indications  of  the  acceptance  of  this  view  present  themselves  ;  but 
it  would  be  vain  to  build  on  it  till  some  adventurous  Englishman,  sated  with  the 
Riviera  and  Monte  Carlo,  shall  enter  the  desert  and  purchase  a  few  of  its  choicest 
mares — not  such  as  have  been  used  for  breeding,  but  fillies  fit  for  cup  races.  In 
regard  to  our  friend's  application,  during  several  years  we  took  a  great  deal  of 
trouble  to  find  an  animal  worthy  of  being  forwarded  to  him.  But  accident  vouch- 
safed no  assistance ;  indirect  means,  as  usual,  proved  worse  than  useless  ;  it  was 
impossible  personally  to  go  and  hunt  up  the  pearl  in  the  black-tent  cities ;  and 
consequently,  his  desire  remained  unfulfilled. 

Before  the  subject  of  the  Arab  cross  is  passed  from,  an  attempt  may  be 
made  to  sift  the  common  impression  that  the  desert  Arab  will  not  sell  his  mare. 
At  the  outset,  it  has  to  be  admitted  that  this  belief  is  not  groundless.  Stories 
of  priceless  mares,  dearer  to  the  owner  than  his  life,  are  widely  circulated.  It 
seems  always  to  be  assumed  in  the  literature  of  the  Arabs  that,  apart  from 
the  foray,  there  is  but  one  way  of  acquiring  a  filly  which  is  the  property  of  a 
stranger,  and  that  is  by  stealing  her !  To  illustrate  this,  room  may  here  be 
found  for  the  following  translation  from  the  well-known  Arabic  book  entitled 
N'af-ha-hi,  7  Yemen} 

A  respectable  person  relates  that  one  day  he  saw  a  man  of  the  Agel,'^  on  whose  back 
were  marks  like  those  of  cupping,  and  asked  for  an  explanation  of  them,  and  received  this 
answer : — 

"  The  state  of  the  case  is,  that  I  loved  a  fair  cousin,  and  sought  her  in  marriage,  and 
her  kindred  said,  'We  will  not  give  her  to  thee  unless  thou  makest  SJia-ba-ka  the  wedding-gift.' 
And  Sha-ba-ka  was  a  mare,  the  fleetest  of  all,  and  she  belonged  to  one  of  the  Ba-nu  Bakr. 
And  on  that  I  married  my  cousin.  And  I  went  out  to  effect  by  stratagem  the  taking  of  the 
mare  from  her  owner,  that  I  might  be  able  to  make  good  the  bridal  dower.  In  the  guise  of  a 
camel-butcher  I  visited  the  tribe  in  which  the  mare  was,  and  kept  going  in  among  them  till  I 
learned  to  distinguish  her  place  from  the  tent  in  which  her  master  was.  And  I  saw  that  she 
had  a  filly.  And  I  contrived  to  enter  the  tent  and  conceal  myself  under  a  heap  of  wool  carded 
for  washing.  And  when  night  came,  and  the  master  of  the  tent  appeared,  and  his  wife  had 
dressed  supper  for  him,  and  they  both  began  to  eat,  and  the  gloom  had  deepened,  and  they 
had  no  lamp,  and  I  was  hungry,  I  put  out  my  hand  and  stretched  it  towards  the  platter,  and 
ate  with  them.  And  the  man  became  conscious  of  my  hand,  and  did  not  know  what  it  was, 
and  he  gripped  it ;  and  I  laid  hold  of  the  woman's  hand  with  my  other  hand,  and  she  said  to 
him,  '  What   do   you  want  with  my  hand .' '      And  he   supposed  the  case  to  be  that  he  was 


^  A  collection  of  biographical  and  moral  pieces, 
of  date  about  150  years  ago,  by  Shekh  Ahmad  of 
Yemen. 

-  The  Agel,  or  more  correctly  IP-kail,  are  a  nation 
of  Arabia.     Their  roots  are  in  Najd,  but  they  flourish 


in  every  locality  to  which  the  trade  of  the  Arabs  is 
extended  by  means  of  camels.  Like  the  chdrans, 
or  reciting  bards,  of  India,  they  are  privileged  to 
pass  ever>'\vhere,  irrespectively  of  tribal  feuds  and 
enmities. 


2l6 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK  III. 


holding  his  wife's  hand,  and  let  go  my  hand,  and  I  released  the  woman's  hand,  and  we  ate. 
.  .  .  And  the  meal  came  to  an  end  ;  and  the  man  stretched  himself  on  his  back  and  slept. 
And  while  he  slept  I  watched  them,  and  the  mare  was  shackled  beside  the  tent,  and  her  filly 
was  unshackled  in  the  tent,  and  the  key  of  the  mare's  fetter  was  under  the  woman's  head. 
After  a  little  time  a  black  slave  arrived  and  threw  a  small  pebble.  And  the  woman  awoke 
and  rose  to  him,  and  left  the  key  in  its  place,  and  went  out  of  the  tent  to  the  back  of  it,  and  I 
crept  and  took  the  key,  and  unlocked  with  it  the  mare's  shackles.  And  I  had  a  hair  bridle 
with  me,  and  I  bridled  the  mare  and  mounted  her,  and  went  off  on  her  from  the  tent.  And 
the  woman  came  back  and  entered  the  tent.  Then  she  called  out,  and  the  tribe  caught  the 
alarm  and  became  aware  of  me,  and  mounted  in  pursuit.  And  I  put  the  mare  to  her  speed, 
with  a  troop  of  them  after  me.  And  I  entered  on  the  time  of  morning,  and  did  not  see  save 
one  horseman,  armed  with  a  lance,  and  he  overtook  me,  and  the  sun  had  risen,  and  the  man 
began  to  thrust  at  me,  and  could  not  get  his  spear-point  any  nearer  to  me  than  sufficed  to 
make  these  traces  on  my  back.  Neither  did  his  mare  come  up  to  me,  so  that  he  might  have 
me  in  his  power,  nor  did  my  mare  carry  me  away,  so  that  the  spear  should  not  touch  me. 
And  we  came  to  a  stream,  and  I  shouted  to  the  mare,  and  she  jumped  it ;  and  the  horseman 
shouted  to  his  mare,  and  she  did  not  jump.  And  when  I  saw  that  she  could  not  cross,  I  got 
off  my  mare  to  rest  myself  and  her.  And  the  man  called  to  me,  and  I  said,  '  What  is  it  ? '  and 
he  answered,  '  I  am  the  owner  of  the  mare  that  is  under  thee,  and  this  is  her  filly,  and  as  you 
have  got  her,  take  care  of  her  ;  and  truly,  by  God,  I  never  asked  anything  of  her  without 
attaining  to  it ;  and  she  was  like  a  fisherman's  net  {shabakd)  in  the  matter  of  taking.' " 

There  is  no  sure  way  of  distinguishing  the  facts  which  He  at  the  foundation  of 
tales  Hke  the  above.  Such  elopements  certainly  hold  a  place  among  the  usages  of 
the  desert ;  but  perhaps  they  are  confined  to  those  who  have  no  money,  or  money's 
worth,  to  offer.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  an  easy  inference,  from  all  that  has  been 
stated  regarding  the  value  of  the  mare  to  the  Bedouin  Arabs,  that  their  natural  in- 
clination is  to  keep  her.  According  to  their  saying,  her  back  is  the  seat  of  riches, 
and  her  womb's  produce  their  year's  harvest.  In  face  of  the  enormous  sums  which 
we  will  pay  for  retiring  turf  heroes,^  and  even  for  untried  yearlings,-  there  is  nothing 
incredible  in  the  stories  which  are  current  of  very  large  offers  having  occasionally 
failed  to  tempt  the  Bad-u  to  transfer  his  treasure  to  a  stranger.  It  is  not  a  very 
simple  matter  to  determine  what,  if  any,  share  mere  sentiment  or  affection  has  in 
hardening  this  bond  of  union.  Each  separate  case  requires  to  be  experimented  on 
with  a  heap  of  gold  or  a  string  of  camels.  Sometimes  a  report  reaches  Baghdad 
that  one  of  the  Ae-ni-za  possesses  a  mare  for  which  he  has  refused  fabulous  offers. 
We  never  have  taken  steps  to  test  such  representations,  because,  for  one  thing,  a 
mare  may  be  worth  a  great  deal  to  the  Bedouin,  and  be  almost  valueless  to  the 


■■  E.g.,  twelve  thousand  guineas  for  Blair  -  Atliol, 
fourteen  thousand  guineas  for  St  Gatien,  and  the 
same  amount  for  Ormonde.  At  tlie  Antipodes  Mr 
Cox  of  Sydney  refused  ten  tliousand  guineas  for 
Yattendon. 


^  As  we  write  this,  we  hear  of  a  daugliter  of  St 
Simon  and  Quiver  fetching  five  thousand  five  liundred 
guineas,  at  her  Majesty's  sale  of  yearlings  ;  also  of  a 
yearling  colt  by  Chester  realising  four  thousand  six 
hundred  guineas  at  Sydney. 


CHAP.   V. 


A    SUM3IARY. 


517 


European.^  It  is  easy  to  be  cynical  on  the  subject  of  sentiment ;  but  even  wlien  the 
Bedouin  Arab  agrees  to  sell  his  mare,  it  is  not  improbable  that  he  does  so  with  sor- 
row in  his  heart.  A  well-known  writer  relates  a  story  of  a  Northumberland  gipsy 
who  was  employed  to  kill  down  the  otters  in  a  nobleman's  fish-pond,  and  was  so 
ably  assisted  by  a  terrier  of  his  own  breeding,  which  he  called  Charlie,  that  his  lord- 
ship tried  to  buy  the  dog,  but  to  no  good  purpose;  the  sturdy  "Egyptian's"  answer 
being,  "  By  the  winds,  his  whole  estate  canna  buy  Charlie!"^  There  are  many 
analogies  between  the  Arabian  Bedouin  and  the  Aryan  gipsies.  And  it  is  but 
reasonable  to  concede  to  the  desert  Arabs  the  same  high  degree  of  attachment  to 
their  mares  which  the  "  Ishmaelites  "  of  Europe  display  towards  useful  pets  of  other 
descriptions.  A  salient  feature  of  the  Arab  horse-trade  appears  to  indicate  that  not 
only  Arab  public  opinion,  but  oriental  public  opinion  at  large,  is  adverse  to  the  re- 
moval of  mares  to  foreign  countries.  The  feature  alluded  to  is,  that  the  dealers  who 
ship  Arab  horses  to  India  include  but  few  mares  in  their  collections.  Many  of  these 
men  are  not  Arabs,  but  Persians  who  have  more  or  less  assumed  the  Arab  speech 
and  manner,  and  their  code  of  law  is  flexible.  Nevertheless,  as  a  rule,  they  only 
take  horses.  Of  course,  a  mare  costs  more  money,  all  things  being  equal,  than  a 
horse  does  ;  but  this  explanation  is  inadequate.  It  occasionally  happens  that  a 
dealer  receives,  when  he  is  in  India,  a  commission,  backed  by  an  advance  of  money, 
from  a  millionaire  Rajah,  to  purchase  race-horses  for  him  after  his  return  to  Arabia. 
In  these  favourable  circumstances,  one  would  expect  him  to  buy  desert  fillies,  re- 
gardless of  price,'  for  his  employer ;  but  he  does  not  do  so.  Or,  to  keep  to  the 
ordinary  trade  level,  any  dealer  might  bring  together  a  string  of  useful  and  more  or 
less  well-bred  Arabian  mares,  at  prices  varying  from  ^5  to  ^200  a-head,  in  and 
around  Baghdad  or  Bussorah.  Animals  of  this  description  would  find  a  ready 
market  in  India.  The  Indians  would  buy  them  for  breeding,  and  for  processional 
occasions ;  and  our  countrymen  would  appreciate  them  as  pleasure-hacks,  especially 
for  ladies.  It  is  true  that  the  Ottoman  authorities  would  oppose  their  exportation  ; 
but  all  the  measures  which  they  might  adopt  to  prevent  it  would  prove  as  futile  as 
their  periodical  embargoes  on  the  exit  of  horses  generally. 

It  is  established  by  many  witnesses  that  mares  of  high  quality  and  reputation 
have  been  sold  to  strangers  by  the  Bedouin  Arabs.     Thus  Mr  Skene,  in  letters 


^  For  example  :  a  mare,  originally  from  the  nation 
of  Harb,  in  Najd,  lately  fell  into  the  hands  of  the 
Bussorah  Government,  after  she  had  made  a  great 
name  for  herself  among  the  Ae-ni-za.  When  she  was 
sold,  a  townsman  bought  her  for  about  ;£3o.  Her 
general  appearance  was  worthy  of  her  reputation. 
She  was  a  magnificent  specimen  of  the  Arabian 
blood-horse.     But  she  was  far  too  unsound  to  be  fit 


for  breeding,  and  she  could  not  walk  without  stum- 
bling. One  day  we  tried  her  for  a  mile  against  a 
hack,  and  the  winged  one  of  desert  hyperbole  was 
beaten  in  the  wretched  time  of  two  minutes  and 
eleven  seconds  ! 

-   V.   "  Our    Dogs,"  in   Hora  Siibseciva,  by  John 
Brown,  M.D.,    1862,  p.   207. 


2  E 


2lS 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


which  subsequently  found  their  way  into  print,  described  several  first-class  mares 
which  he  had  bought,  at  prices  running  up  to  ^400,  from  the  tribes  of  Sha-mi-ya  and 
Al  Ja-zi-ra.  Captain  Upton  mentions  "  six  horses  and  mares  "  which  he  and  his 
companions  obtained  from  the  Ae-ni-za,  in  1874-75.^  I"  Bedouin  Tribes  of  the 
Etiphratcs  it  is  not  disclosed  how,  where,  and  at  what  prices  the  Crabbet  Park 
stud  matrons  were  procured;  but  Mr  Blunt  says,  in  a  later  essay,  that  "good 
Arabian  mares  of  the  best  blood  may  be  purchased  in  the  desert  at  from  ^200  to 
^250  "  each,  and  that  he  got  many  of  his  for  less.^ 

The  truth  is,  that  it  all  depends  on  circumstances.  The  mares  of  the  Arabs, 
though  not  in  the  first  instance  intended  for  the  market,  do  nevertheless  drift 
towards  it.  If  accident  may  bestow  a  first-class  mare  on  an  English  consul,  it  may 
equally  do  so  on  others.-^ 

Perhaps  it  will  be  thought  that  all  these  observations  on  "  a  further  cross  "  with 
Arabs  follow  a  wrong  direction.  No  practical  person,  it  may  be  said,  now  supposes 
that  if  the  best  mare  in  England  were  to  visit  the  best  Arab  that  ever  trod  the  desert, 
the  immediate  issue  would  excel,  or  even  equal,  its  progenitors  on  the  dam's  side. 
But  apart  from  all  idea  of  producing  improvement  or  increased  superiority,  is  it  not 
necessary,  at  certain  intervals,  to  return  to  Eastern  blood,  with  the  object  of  ward- 
ing off  decline  in  the  modern  English  race-horse,  and  in  all  the  secondary  kinds 
which  derive  their  virtue  from  him  ?  Owing,  perhaps,  to  long  residence  among  the 
Arabs,  we  fail  to  understand  how  any  one  can  advocate  such  a  piece  of  retrogres- 
sion. It  would  be  presumption  to  hazard  an  opinion  on  the  moot-point  of  whether 
the  heroic  line  of  Voltigeur  and  the  Dutchman,  Hampton  and  Rosicrucian,  is 
now  undergoing  deterioration.  Any  one  may  see,  in  the  course  of  a  few  visits 
to  the  training-grounds  of  England,  that  far  too  many  leggy  weeds  and  flat-sided, 
five-furlono-  wretches  exist  amongr  us.  Our  island  breeders  must  look  to  this, 
if  they  would  continue  to  supply  Europe  and  America,  as  well  as  Egypt,  India, 
China,  Australasia,  New  Zealand,  and  South  Africa,  with  thoroughbred  horses, 
while  retaining  a  sufficient  number  with  which  to  challenge  the  world.  But  other 
saving  measures  are  at  their  disposal  than  crosses  with  horses  of  unverified  pedi- 
gree.    It  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  the  Darley  Arabian,  besides  being,  in  all 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  5,  p.  402. 

2  "  The  Forthcoming  Arab  Race  at  Newmarket," 
in  Nineteeiitk  Centtiry,  May  1884,  p.  763. 

2  Par  exemple,  while  this  is  being  printed  we  hear 
from  Baghdad  of  a  Russian  nobleman  who  has  just 
returned  from  a  long  and  difficult  journey  in  Central 
Arabia.  Naturally  so  distinguished  a  traveller  did  not 
fail  to  visit  Amir  Muhammad,  the  prince  of  Ja-bal 
Sham-mar.     Presents  worthy  of  the  occasion  were  of 


course  not  omitted ;  and  the  Amir's  return  gift  to  the 
Baron  consisted  of  three  mares  "  on  which  was  Allah's 
blessing."  One  of  these  mares,  as  we  are  informed,  is 
being  taken  to  Constantinople,  for  presentation  to  H.I. 
Majesty  the  Sultan  ;  while  the  other  two  have  passed 
into  the  possession  of  a  French  gentleman,  who,  after 
the  annexation  of  his  native  province  by  the  Germans, 
transferred  himself,  with  much  of  his  property,  to  the 
City  of  the  Caliphs. 


CHAP.   V. 


A    SUMMARY. 


219 


probability,  pretty  closely  inbred,  was  a  model  both  in  respect  of  make  and  sound- 
ness.     But  if  he  possessed  as  good  a  set  of  legs  as  those  of  the  only  Derby  winner 
which  we  have  ever  had  an  opportunity  of  looking  over,  then  he  was  fortunate. 
Here  we  pass  to  the  second  of  the  two  divisions  of  this  chapter — 

On  the  Naturalisation  Abroad  of  the  Arabian  Breed. 

Our  century  has  seen  a  considerable  number  of  experiments  made  with  this 
object,  but  the  results  are  not  encouraging.  His  Majesty  the  late  King  of  Wur- 
temberg  (18 17-1864)  was  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  the  Arabian  horse.  Altogether, 
he  was  able  to  obtain  for  his  stud  near  Stuttgart  thirty-eight  horses  and  thirty-six 
mares  of  Arabian  blood  and  birth.  His  object  was  to  breed  pure  Arabs.  Dur- 
ing his  reign,  when  an  Arab  was  in  all  strictness  a  royal  hobby,  the  four-year-old 
Arabs  which  his  Majesty  distributed  by  means  of  annual  sales  brought  an  average  of 
£12^  each  as  chargers.     After  his  death  the  average  fell  to  £6"]} 

Another  pre-eminent  name  in  this  connection  is  A'b-bas  Pasha,  from  1848  to 
1854  Viceroy  of  Egypt.  Many  accounts  exist  of  the  lavish  manner  in  which  this 
prince  dealt  out  the  good  things  of  Egypt  to  the  Arabs.  Palgrave  assigns  to  him 
a  set  policy  of  buying  the  allegiance  equally  of  the  Wahabite  confederacy  and 
of  the  disunited  clans  of  the  desert,  so  that  he  might  rule  in  Egypt  less  as  the 
Porte's  vassal  than  as  sovereign  of  the  Arabian  peninsula.^  But  to  understand  the 
character  of  his  administration,  it  is  perhaps  only  necessary  to  remember  that,  in  his 
childhood,  he  had  lived  in  the  desert  ;  that  as  a  Muslim  he  naturally  preferred  Arab 
to  European  alliances  ;  and  that  he  was  not  a  great  man,  but  one  who  followed  the 
bent  of  his  inclination.  At  any  rate,  there  never  was  a  more  zealous  collector  of 
Arabian  mares  and  horses.  His  stud  contained  upwards  of  a  thousand  animals  of 
the  purest  strains  of  blood  ;  and  to  this  day  the  mouths  of  the  Bedouin  water  when 
they  think  of  the  prices  which  his  agents  would  pay  for  one  colt  or  filly.  ^  Perhaps 
the  most  important  feature  in  the  record  is  the  remark  which  his  Highness  the  Pasha 
made  to  Freiherr  von  Hugel,  chief  of  the  stud  of  the  King  of  Wiirtemberg,  when 
he  was  describing  the  pure  Arabs  in  the  royal  stables  at  Stuttgart  :  "  Even  if  you 
succeed  in  getting  hold  of  genuine  Arabs,  you  will  never  breed  real  Arabs  from 


^  "  The  Breeding  of  Horses,"  in  Edinburgh  Review, 
October  1873,  pp.  444-446. 

-  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  7,  vol.  i.  pp.  1 89- 194. 

^  E.g.,  according  to  Mr  Skene,  ^800  for  one  stal- 
lion. A'b-bas  Pasha's  stud  was  but  little  cared  for  by 
his  successor.  In  i860  the  remains  of  it  came  under 
the  hammer  at  Cairo.     By  that  time  only  about  three 


hundred  and  fifty  animals  were  left.  The  sale  was 
spread  over  three  weeks.  On  one  day  twenty-six 
horses  fetched  five  thousand  guineas.  Mares  twenty 
years  old  were  sold  at  from  one  hundred  and  eighty 
to  two  hundred  and  fifty  guineas.  Colts  and  fillies 
realised  from  three  hundred  to  seven  hundred  guineas 
each. 


220  GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN.  book  hi. 

them  ;  for  an  Arab  horse  is  no  longer  an  Arab  when  he  ceases  to  breathe  the  air  of 
the  desert."  Probably  A'b-bas  Pasha  had  brought  himself  to  think  that  Egypt  was 
Arabia ;  and  compared  with  the  South-German  plateau,  it  is  so.  Nevertheless, 
climate  is  irresistible.  A  well-watered  country,  lying  near  the  sea,  cannot  fail  to 
exert  other  influences  on  animal  life  than  those  which  belong  to  the  grassy  lime- 
stone uplands  of  Najd.  If  the  finest  known  specimens  of  the  Barb,  or  African 
Arab,  lack  the  perfect  balance  of  the  parent  type,  climate,  probably,  is  at  the  bottom 
of  it.  In  the  same  way,  it  is  not  impossible  that  A'b-bas  Pasha's  shrewd  observa- 
tion about  the  Stuttgart  Arabs  admitted  of  extension  to  his  own  Egyptian  Arabs, 
in  the  second  or  third  generation. 

At  the  mention  of  transplanting  the  Arabian  breed  to  Europe,  all  must  natur- 
ally think  of  Mr  Wilfrid  Blunt.  Here  respect  must  temper  criticism.  The 
British  public  is  much  indebted  to  Mr  Blunt.  Without  having  the  smallest 
personal  object,  he  worked  hard,  and  freely  expended  his  money,  in  order  to 
bring  about  a  reconsideration  of  the  basis  on  which  our  thoroughbred  stock  is 
established.  But  how  can  any  one  be  expected  seriously  to  consider  an  argument 
which  proceeds  on  the  assumption  that  the  Arabian  horse  "  is  the  descendant 
of  a  single  race  kept  pure  since  its  first  domestication  "  ?  ^  As  to  this  we  may  be 
allowed  to  say  that  if  Mr  Blunt,  before  giving  way  to  such  a  fancy,  had  taken  the 
trouble  to  think  clearly,  his  views  would  have  been  modified.  If  the  necessity  of 
examining  the  foundations  of  his  theory  failed  to  impress  him,  at  least  he  had 
the  courage  of  it.  He  imported  eighteen  Arabian  mares  and  two  Arabian  stal- 
lions, confessedly  as  an  experiment,  but  not  without  the  sanguine  hope  of  their 
one  day  bestowing  on  the  English  turf,  to  quote  his  words,  "  a  neiv  race  of 
thoroughbreds,  this  time  really  thoroughbred ;  "  and  on  the  stud,  "  a  more  perfect 
animal  than  any  that  England  has  yet  possessed." '^  After  an  interval  of  four  years, 
he  reported  progress  in  an  exceedingly  interesting  paper, -^  in  which  he  gave  measure- 
ments showing  that,  "  with,  of  course,  a  few  exceptions,"  the  general  run  of  the 
young  Arabs  bred  in  England  from  the  imported  animals  had  been  increased  in  size 
by  the  action  of  the  English  climate,  combined  with  good  feeding.  The  only 
wonder  is  that,  in  this  nineteenth  century,  any  one  should  have  considered  it 
necessary  to  demonstrate  over  again  a  fact  which  everybody  knows,  or  ought  to 
know.  Without  going  beyond  the  limits  of  Arabia,  one  may  notice  how  the 
breeds  of  camels  vary  in  bulk  and  stature  in  different  districts,  according  to  the 
climate. 

If  only  character  or  manners  be  in  question,  perhaps  there  is  a  way  in  which 

1  V.  Mr  Blunt's  article,  "The  Thoroughbred  Horse,"     1         ^  The  same  article,  p.  422. 
in  Nineteenth  Century,  September  18S0,  p.  423.  I         ^  Nineteenth  Century,  May  1884. 


CHAP.    V. 


A    SUMMARY. 


221 


European  horses  might  be  brought  to  resemble  those  of  the  Arabs,  and  that  is, 
through  our  coming  to  closer  terms  with  them.  Admittedly  there  must  always 
remain,  like  a  priestly  caste,  between  us  and  them,  those  consequential  persons  who 
keep  the  key  of  the  stable  door ;  but  the  modern  system  of  education  may  be 
trusted  to  improve  these  people.  The  bon  camarado  feeling  with  which  the 
Bedouin  regard  the  equine  sharer  of  their  adventures  would  well  become  all  of  us. 
That  true-toned  moralist  of  the  realm  of  sport,  Whyte  Melville,  showed  the  way  in 
this  direction,  when  he  impressed  it  on  his  readers  that  the  hunter  which  has  car- 
ried one  in  a  fast  run  deserves  the  same  solicitude,  both  then  and  afterwards,  as 
does  the  beautiful  and  gentle  partner  in  a  waltz !  The  desert  horseman's  treat- 
ment of  his  mare  is  unique  in  several  features.  He  does  not  "  spare  for  spoil- 
ing "  of  her  :  we  have  seen  how  he  will  ride  her  to  death  in  urgent  circumstances. 
But  he  exalts  her  above  the  level  to  which  the  inferior  animals  are  necessarily 
restricted  in  the  lands  of  commerce  and  high  pressure.  One  of  the  heroic  tales 
of  Najd  contains  a  battlepiece  in  which  the  reciter  describes  how  he  rode  at  the 
hattberk-wearers  till  his  charger  seemed  clad  in  a  shirt  of  blood ;  and  the  dumb  animal 
is  no  sooner  mentioned  than  the  following  sympathetic  reference  is  brought  in  by 
way  of  climax  : — 

And  he  swerved  from  the  thrusts  of  the  spears  in  his  breast ; 
And  made  moan  to  me  with  tear  and  ham-ha-ma  :  ^ 
Had  he  known  how  to  confabulate,  he  would  have  complained; 
And  if  speech  had  been  given  to  him,  he  would  have  addressed  me. 

— A'n-tar. 

In  our  country,  sentiment  of  this  description  may  seem  exclusively  to  belong  to 
the  domain  of  poetry.     We  can  no  longer  say  with  Spenser — 

"  Chiefly  skill  to  ride 
Seems  a  science  proper  to  gentle  blood." 

The  squire  of  Cowper's  Task — 

"  Who  always,  ere  he  mounted,  kissed  his  horse," — 

represents  a  type  which  is  vanishing.  The  creation  of  a  new  equestrian  class  in 
the  British  Islands  has  formed  a  great  commercial  feature  of  this  century;  but  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  the  increase  in  numbers  of  horses  and  horsemen  has,  on  the 
whole,  been  attended  with  improvement  in  the  horse's  status.     The  use  of  such  a 


1  A  word  of  the  same  class  as  mew,  bow-wow, 
&c.  Derivatives  from  natural  sounds  are  frequent 
in  Arabic.     Ghar-gha-ra,  gurgling;  na-kha-ra  [our 


"nicher"],  snorting;  an-iia,  ya-in-nu,  whining,  or 
moaning  ;  a!ts,  sneezing  ;  kahh,  coughing  ;  hiss,  a 
low  sound,  —are  examples. 


222 


GENERAL    VIEW  OF   THE  ARABIAN. 


BOOK   III. 


term  as  status  in  this  connection  may  excite  a  smile  in  those  whose  thoughts  about 
their  horses  always  work  round  to  money.  But  there  are  others  of  our  countrymen 
who  will  perhaps  concur  in  the  opinion,  that  the  more  considerate  we  are  of  our 
horses'  happiness  and  feelings,  the  less  reason  we  shall  have  to  draw  unfavourable 
comparisons  between  them  and  those  of  the  Bedouin  Arabs.  The  "gentleman" 
is   "gentle,"  not  only  towards  his  fellows,  but  also  towards  the  inferior  animals. 


feyspp; 


^j 


»-. 


-^i 


A   BIT  ON   THE  TIGRIS. 


BOOK     FOURTH 

THE     ARABIAN     AT     HOME 


m 


tilko: 


CHAPTER    I. 

ON   THE   ORIGIN   OF  THE   ARABIAN   BREED. 

^^J^^^^HAT  branch  of  geology  which  is  more  particularly  occupied  with  fossil 
remains  traces  back  the  "creation"  of  the  Horse,  as  now  known, 
through  numerous  progressive  forms  or  stages,  to  an  absolutely  pre- 
historic period  ;  but  they  who  would  pursue  this  subject  must  consult 
special  books. ^  It  is  at  the  point  where  the  discourse  of  the  naturalist  ceases 
that  that  of  the  breeder  or  "  fancier "  begins.  When  the  zoologist  has  ticketed 
off,  in  genus  Eqims,  the  so-called  "species"  of  (i)  Eqtms  cabalhis,  or  horse; 
(2)  Equus  asinus,  or  domestic  ass;  (3)  the  rufous  wild  asses  of  Asia ;  and,  lastly, 
the  striped  quaggas,  dauws,  and  zebras  of  South  Africa,  —  he  leaves  it  to  the 
horseman  to  register  the  following,  among  other,  varieties  of  Equus  caballus : — ■ 

The  English  Thoroughbred  ; 

The  various  established  strains  of  trotting,  coaching,  and  agricultural  horses  of 

the  British  Islands  ; 
Other  European  breeds — e.o-.,  the  Flanders  or  Flemish  breed  ; 
The  Arabian ; 
The  Barb  ; 
The  Turku-ma-ni ; 

The  Dongola,  and  other  African  breeds ; 
All  the  races  of  ponies,  from  the  Shetland  Isles  to  Burmah. 

Lovers  of  the  sesthetic  may  expect  from  us  a  different  treatment  of  our  subject 
than  that  we  should  begin  by  labelling  as  a  mere  variety  of  Eqtms  cabalbis,  the  horse 
which  is  held  to  be  the  prototype  of  his  species,  the  rosy-coated  -  Arabian  courser ; 

1  E.g.,  The  Horse  (in  "  Modern   Science "  series),     I         ^  V.,  in  table  of  colours,  p.  263,  mu-ivar-rad,  or 
by  W.  H.  Flower,  C.B.,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.    London,  1S91.     I     roseate,  as  a  colour  of  Arab  horses. 

2  F 


226 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK  IV. 


of  whom  ail  I'raki  poet  of  the  artificial  school  imagined  that  the  pure  air  satis- 
fied his  hunger,^  and  the  smoke  uprising  from  sun-scorched  plains  his  thirst. 
But  as  a  good  deal  more  of  this  moonshine  falls  on  the  track  which  awaits  us,  it 
is  the  more  necessary  to  take  preliminary  note  of  the  Arabian's  place  in  Natural 
Histor)'. 

The  reappearance  among  the  Arabs  of  the  ancient  fable  about  the  condensation 
of  the  south  wind  to  form  the  Horse  was  glanced  at  in  another  place  ;  ^  and  the 
wonderful  stories  which  prevail  in  towns  like  Bussorah  regarding  the  origin  of 
the  specialised  Arabian  breed  look  like  embellishments  of  the  same  conception. 
In  a  very  old  recital  of  this  class,  the  sea  foam  takes  the  place  of  the  wind  as 
the  procreant  element.  Solomon,  King  of  Israel,  it  is  stated,  had  a  horse  of 
matchless  excellence.  One  day  he  made  the  genii  toss  this  animal  into  the  sea, 
and  push  him  back  every  time  that  he  tried  to  swim  ashore.  Seven  colts,  each 
destined  to  sire  a  noble  lineage,  proceeded  out  of  the  foam  which  marked  his 
sinking.^  Orientals  do  not  believe  these  stories,  any  more  than  we  do  certain 
similar  legends  which  we  nevertheless  repeat  to  our  children  ;  but  they  do  not 
seem  to  look  much  further  than  them.  The  above  representation  possesses  but 
one  feature  which  is  of  interest  here,  and  that  is,  its  allusion  to  King  Solomon. 
To  this  day  the  three  grandest,  truest,  and  most  original  figures  in  Semite  story, 
as  it  appears  to  many,  are  Abraham,  Solomon,  and  Muhammad.  The  David 
of  the  Books  of  Samuel  holds  the  highest  place  among  the  rulers  and  judges  of 
Israel.  But  all  over  Western  Asia,  the  renown  of  him  whose  military  genius 
made  Jerusalem  an  imperial  capital  is  lost  in  that  of  his  successor — the  grand 
monarch,  at  whose  bidding  temples  and  palaces  arose ;  whose  commercial  policy 
extended  the  circle  of  his  prestige  ;  and  for  whose  magnificent  acts,  and  insights 
into  Nature's  Kingdom,'^  tradition  could  only  account  by  supposing  him  invested 
with  sovereignty  over  demons.  In  another  context,^  familiar  passages  of  Scripture 
were  cited  to  illustrate  how  the  collection  and  distribution  of  horses  ranked  among 
the  many  sensational  features  of  Solomon's  reign.     A  daughter  of  a  Pharaoh  was 


^  Similarly,  Ariosto — 

"  Erst  Argalia's  courser,  which  was  born 
From  a  close  union  of  the  wind  and  flame, 
And  nourished  not  by  hay  or  heartening  corn, 
Fed  on  pure  air." 

— Orlan,  Fur.,  c.  xv. 

2  V.  p.  4,  ante.  In  the  same  way,  Homer,  to  account 
for  the  hurricane-like  course  of  the  horses  in  Achilles' 
chariot,  assigns  to  them  the  pedigree,  "by  Zephyrus 
out  of  the  harpy  Podarge"  (//.,  xvi.  14S).  And  accord- 
ing to  Tasso — 

"  This  jennet  was  by  Tagus  bred  ;  for  oft 
The  breeder  of  these  beasts  to  war  assignede, 
When  first  on  trees  burgen  the  blossoms  soft, 


Prickt  forward  with  the  string  of  fertile  kinde, 

Against  the  aire  cast  up  her  head  aloft : 

And  gath'reth  seed  so  from  the  fniitfuU  winde, 

And  thus  conceiving  of  the  gentle  blast 

(A  wonder  strange  and  rare)  she  foales  at  last." 

— Jerus.  Freed,  Bk.  vii.  (Fairfax's  translation). 

2  This  story  also,  as  the  reader  will  notice,  admits 
of  being  traced  to  many  sources.  In  Greek  myth- 
ology, a  horse  was  created  by  the  sea-god  Poseidon's 
striking  the  ground,  in  Thessaly,  with  his  fish-spear. 
And  the  sacred  Indian  horse  Uccaihsrawas  was  pro- 
duced at  the  churning  of  ocean. 

*  I  Kings  iv.  33.  ^  V.  ante,  p.  27. 


CHAP.   I. 


ON    THE    ORIGIN  OF   THE  ARABIAN  BREED. 


227 


one  of  his  700  wives.^  At  that  time  (loth  century  B.C.)  the  Nile  kingdom  v/as 
ricli  in  horses."^  Hence  it  naturally  followed  that  "  the  horses  which  Solomon 
had  were  brought  out  of  Egypt ;  and  the  king's  merchants  received  them  in  droves, 
each  drove  at  a  price."  ^  Now  the  connection  of  these  facts  with  our  present  theme 
lies  in  this,  that  the  masses  of  the  Arabs,  for  whom  the  Kur-an  is  the  beginning 
and  end  of  all  history  and  geography,  hold  Solomon,  King  of  Israel,  to  have  been 
an  Arab.  Before  Muhammad,^  Arabian  tradition  was  not  less  charged  than 
Hebrew  with  floating  and  fragmentary'  notices  of  the  "man  of  peace  ";^  and  very 
many  of  these  afterwards  found  a  place  in  the  Kur-an.  At  the  risk  of  overtaxing 
the  reader's  patience,  one  such  reference  must  here  be  quoted,  because  of  the 
way  in  which  modern  fabulists  interweave  it  with  their  own  veracious  pieces  of 
horse  history.      Gabriel's  words,   very  literally  rendered,  are — 

And  We   [Allah]  gave  to   Da-ud,   Su-lai-man,    the    best  of  God's    servants  —  truly   a   constant    turner 

[Godward]. 
When,  at  eventide,  the  slanders  on  three  legs,  touching  the  ground  with  the  tip  of  the  fourth  foot — the 

outstrippers — were  ranged  before  him, 
Then  he  said,  Truly  I  have  loved  the  love  of  worldly  weal,  more  than  the  remembrance  of  my  Master, 

until  is  hidden  [the  Sun]  behind  the  curtain  [of  Night] ; 
Bring  them  back  to  me.     And  he  began  to  smite  them  neck  and  thigh. 

— Su-ra  xxxviii. 

In  this  quotation,  the  Prophet,  to  admonish  those  who  heard  him,  brought  in  a  frag- 
ment narrating  how,  once  upon  a  time,  the  pious  king  and  patriarch,  absorbed  in 
admiration  of  his  stud,  omitted  the  evening  prayer  ;  and  afterwards,  on  his  consci- 
ence pricking  him,  sacrificed  the  four-footed  idols.  The  historical  starting-point  of 
this  merely  was  the  extraordinary  pains  which  the  traditional  Solomon  took  to  im- 
prove the  horse-supply  of  his  kingdom.  But  mark  the  use  which  is  now  made  of  it. 
If  we  should  here  inform  the  general  reader,  solely  on  our  own  authority,  that  there 
are  numerous  persons  of  considerable  knowledge  and  understanding  who  hold  that 
in  our  day  every  genuine  Arabian  derives  his  pedigree  from  strains  preserved  by 
Solomon,  the  statement  might  exceed  the  bounds  of  credibility.  But  evidence  to 
that  effect  is  about  to  be  cited  in  the  words  of  one  of  the  principal   recent  figures  in 


^  I  Kings  iii.  i  ;  et  xi.  3. 

2  The  horse  begins  to  appear  in  the  Egyptian  monu- 
ments so  far  back  as  the  i8th  century  B.C.,  and  tra- 
dition points  to  Egypt  as  one  of  the  first  places  in 
which  the  breeding  and  management  of  horses  received 
full  attention  from  settled  people. 

^  I  Kings  X.  28,  revised  version.  But  from  2  Chron. 
i\-.  28,  it  further  appears  that  "they  brought  horses 
for  Solomon  .  .  .  out  of  all  lands." 

*  Na-bi-gha,  r,  22. 

'"  The  Bibhcal  form,  Shelomo,  for  Shelomon,  is  now 


thus  rendered.  In  the  Kur-an  it  is  written  Su-lai- 
man.  The  Arab  grammarians  reckon  this  a  regularly 
derived  form  {dimmutive)  from  Sal-man,  at  this  day 
a  much  esteemed  proper  name  throughout  Arabia. 
European  scholars  hold  "  Su-lai-man  "  to  be  an  Arab 
deformation,  or  adaptation,  of  She-16-m6.  In  any  case, 
the  root  oi  She-ld-7noii  is  also  that  oi  Sal-mdn,  equally 
in  Arabic  and  Hebrew.  The  same  root  appears  in 
sa-ldin,  is-ldm,  Salem,  Jerusalem,  Absolom,  and  many 
other  words. 


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BOOK  IV. 


the  Arab  horse  trade,  the  late  Esau  bin  Curtas,^  of  Bussorah  and  Calcutta.  Esau 
was  not  a  reading  man  or  a  writing  one  ;  but  he  was  a  very  shrewd  one,  as  his 
success,  not  only  with  horses  but  in  other  branches  of  Arabian  commerce,  showed. 
Even  book  knowledge  reached  him  indirectly,  in  the  modern  Arabian  Nights 
Entertainments,  or  conversaziones,  of  Zubair  and  Bussorah.  If  he  could  not  write 
himself,  he  had  those  who  could  both  write  and  read  for  him ;  and  the  editors  of  a 
Calcutta  magazine,  in  the  number  for  October  1869,  allowed  him  to  enlighten 
English  readers  regarding  the  history  of  the  Arabian  breed.  The  groundwork  of 
his  ideas  is  thus  described  by  him  : — 

"  Solomon,  it  appears,  was  a  great  lover  of  horses ;  in  fact,  he  spent  the  greatest  part  of 
his  day,  and  devoted  much  of  his  time,  in  admiration  of  them.  This  great  patriarch,  a  devoted 
and  humble  servant  of  God,  one  day,  engrossed  by  the  company  of,  and  perfection  of  the 
beauty  of,  his  horses,  omitted  to  say  his  prayers  ;  for  which  reason,  on  reflecting  on  his  neglect 
to  God  for  worldly  pleasure,  he  took  an  extreme  hatred  to  his  horses,  and  turned  them  all 
loose,  all  over  the  country  :  on  which  occasion,  let  it  well  be  noticed,  six  of  the  elite  of  known 
mares  were  selected  from  the  loose  and  abandoned  lot,  and  kept  especially  for  breeding 
purposes  by  an  equal  number  of  individuals. 

"  From  that  date  the  names  of  those  six  individual  owners  were  given  to  the  six  mares 
respectively,  and  which  can  be  traced  to  the  present  day.  From  these  six  mares  have 
descended  a  long  list  of  names  which  have  no  end.  The  produce,  unlimited,  from  the  above 
six  mares  is  to  a  degree  astonishing ;  and  unless  the  blood  of  the  foals  can  be  traced  back  to 
one  of  them,  they  are  scorned  by  the  Bedouins,  who  will  have  nothing  to  say  to  them.  The 
Bedouins  of  the  present  day  have  not,  as  is  supposed,  relaxed  in  the  slightest  degree  their 
search  or  trace  back  to  their  six  renowned  dams  ;  and  their  minuteness  in  their  inquiries  is 
extremely  correct."  ^ 

Now  it  must  not  be  imagined  that  Esau  fabricated  this  account.  It  simply  is, 
as  the  reader  will  perceive,  a  garbled  version  of  the  passage  in  the  Kur-an  about 
Solomon  and  his  mares  which  has  just  been  quoted.  The  fact  of  its  owning  such  a 
source  is  enough  to  separate  it  from  the  genuine — that  is.  Bedouin — Arabs,  who 
no  more  occupy  themselves  with  material  of  this  description  than  the  pure  Romany 
blood  does  with  church  history  in  Europe.  The  proper  way  to  regard  it  is  as  a 
piece  of  lore  of  the  Arab  horse-dealers,  who  find  it  a  valuable  aid  to  business  when 
they  go  to  India.  Strange  as  it  may  sound,  they  frequently  succeed  in  impressing 
the  essential  part  of  it  on  the  minds  of  educated  Europeans.  For  example,  the 
late  Major  Upton,  in  Gleanings  from  the  Desert  of  Arabia,  takes  up  the 
wondrous  tale  where  Esau  left  it.  He  finds  no  difficulty  in  believing  that  a  breed 
which  existed  when  the  throne  of  Israel  was  at  its  highest  glory  has  been  continued 


^  Correctly,  !'-sa  ihtu  '1  Kir-tas,  or  I'-sA,  son  of  the 
paper;  but  we  write  the  name  as  it  is  commonly 
known.  "  Bin,"  for  "  ibn,"  is  not  Arabic.  "l'-sa"no 
doubt  is  a  corruption  of  "Esau";  but  the  Arabs 
themselves,   in   naming   a   boy   "  I'-sa,"   are   naming 


him  after  "the  Prophet  Jesus,"  whom  by  a  strange 
confusion  they  call  by  the  Jewish  distortion  of  his 
true  name  :  v.  ante,  p.  io6,  in  f  n.  i. 

-  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  38,  vol.  ii.  p.  670. 


CHAP.  I.  ON   THE    ORIGIN   OF   THE  ARABIAN  BREED.  229 

down  to  our  day.  So  far  he  agrees  with  Esau  ;  but  he  goes  further.  In  his  opinion 
it  is  "  unwarrantable  to  suppose  that  the  great  King  of  Israel  is  intended,"  by 
the  "genuine  Arabs,"  when  they  trace  back,  as  he  says  they  do,  the  first  five 
(Esau  writes  six)  Arabian  mares  to  the  stud  of  Solomon.  He  says  that  this  is  "a 
misconception."  The  Arabs,  he  continues,  "  unpretending  and  thoroughly  truthful, 
have  simply  mentioned  a  fact  in  their  history  connected  with  their  own  direct 
ancestors  " — that  is,  of  course,  in  naming  a  Solomon  as  their  heroic  horse-breeder.^ 
An  appeal  is  then  made  to  what  is  called  Arab  "history."  And  the  result  is  the 
discovery  that  the  Solomon  to  whom  the  "  genuine  Arabs "  hold  themselves 
indebted  for  their  horses  was  "an  Arabian  patriarch"  of  that  name  who  "lived 
some  six  centuries  before  the  time  of  Solomon,  King  of  Israel,"  and  was  "only 
fourth  in  descent  from  Ismail."  The  work  in  which  this  is  stated  is  less  known 
than  the  same  author's  Neivmarket  and  Arabia,  of  which  it  forms  a  fitting  continu- 
ation. The  only  important  fact  which  we  can  discover  in  it  is,  that  Major 
Upton  lived  and  died  believing  it  to  be  "recorded  in  history"  that  "an  authentic 
family  of  horses  has  been  preserved  in  Arabia  for  3500  years."  If  all  the  accumula- 
tions of  antiquity  concerning  the  old  world  were  history,  even  in  the  restricted  sense 
of  relating  to  men  that  have  lived,  or  events  that  have  happened,  this  statement 
might  be  worth  sifting ;  but  as  the  facts  are,  the  Arabian  Nights  contains  nothing 
which  is  more  unsubstantial.  At  the  same  time,  however,  it  should  not  be  left 
unstated  that  Major  Upton  has  Mr  Blunt  more  or  less  with  him.  Both  these 
authorities  are  entitled  to  respect  in  matters  of  opinion.  But  there  are  also  such 
things  as  facts  ;  and  where  facts  are  wanting,  various  degrees  of  probability  and 
improbability  require  to  be  considered.  They  who  have  reached  this  chapter  by 
the  skipping  process  may  here  go  back,  if  so  inclined,  to  the  pages  which  were 
devoted  to  showing  that  Arabia,  as  now  known,  never  can  have  supported  wild 
horses.-  And  in  regard  to  the  knotty  question  of  when  its  famous  breed  originated, 
he  who  is  content  to  imagine,  without  any  real  evidence,  that  the  Arabs  of  King 
Solomon's  time  possessed  the  very  stock  of  which  was  the  Darley,  must  continue  to 
be  of  that  opinion.  In  due  season  we  shall  again  refer  to  the  ancient  Arabian  poetry 
in  connection  with  this  subject,  but  first  it  is  necessary  to  escape  out  of  fable-land. 
The  sober-minded  reader  may  marvel  at  any  European  pausing  before  the  pile  of 
artificial  horse-lore  of  which  Solomon,  and  next  to  him  Muhammad,  are  made  the 
pillars.  The  two  fragments  of  it  which  we  have  quoted  are  merely  specimens.  One 
of  them — that  which  introduces  seven  mysterious  colts  of  Solomon's — is,  of  course, 
a  pure  piece  of  myth-growth.  The  other,  wherein  six  mares  are  mentioned,  is  not 
even  a  legend.     We  have  just  seen  that  it  is  merely  a  modern  perversion,  by  illiterate 

^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  4,  pp.  289-291.  |  ^  V.  ante,  pp.  7  et  74. 


230 


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BOOK  IV. 


townsmen,  of  a  passage  in  one  of  Muhammad's  homilies.  No  better  foundation  is 
assignable  to  the  cycle  of  stories  which  represents  the  Arabian  breed  as  descended 
from  mares  identified  with  the  Arab  Prophet.  Such  tales  are  kept  for  travel- 
lers. If  they  possess  any  significance,  it  is  but  to  illustrate  how,  when  once  a 
nation  has  found  its  hero,  everything  is  made  to  connect  itself  with  him.  The 
direct  and  indirect  influence  of  the  Muslim  era  in  increasing  the  importance  of 
horse-soldiery  has  been  fully  noticed  ;  but  it  has  also  been  observed  that  Arabia 
before  the  Flight  nursed  the  breeds  which  mounted  the  cavalry  of  the  first  four 
Caliphs.  Love  of  horses  runs  in  the  blood  of  the  Arabs,  and  Muhammad  was 
not  an  exception.  Nevertheless,  in  so  far  as  he  was  a  martial  man,  he  represented 
the  Cromwell  more  than  the  Rupert  type.  Tradition  relates  that  he  never  struck 
any  one  in  his  life  except  in  defence  of  the  Faith.^  His  biographers  give  him 
at  least  three  chargers  ;  ^  but  less  is  heard  of  his  horses  than  of  his  she-camels, 
especially  Al  Kas-wa,  from  whose  back  he  addressed  40,000  people  on  a  solemn 
and  memorable  occasion ;  his  mule,  Dul-dul  ;  and  his  ass,  U'fair. 

The  fiction  that  the  Arabian  breed  came  in  with  the  Kur-an  finds  congenial 
soil  in  coflfee-houses,  but  the  desert  does  not  know  it.  There  are,  however,  two 
points  in  the  current  stories  on  this  subject  which  deserve  to  be  attentively  con- 
sidered. One  point  is,  that  according  to  a  concert  of  Arab  representation,  the  pure- 
bred stock  of  the  desert  descends  in  the  female  line.  The  other  is,  that  the  mothers 
of  the  breed  are  now  arranofed  in  five  collateral  branches. 

In  the  towns  of  Syria,  I'rak,  and  Persia,  there  is  a  widespread  notion  that  the 
male  parent  transmits  the  qualities  of  the  breed — in  other  words,  that  the  foal  fol- 
lows the  stallion.  The  idea  of  the  horse  being  the  maker,  and  the  mare  "  only  a 
sack,"  may  attract  those  who  habitually  look  down  on  females,  and  who  have  no 
experience  of  horse-breeding  on  a  large  scale.  The  much-travelled  and  cosmo- 
politan Guarmani  builds  on  the  same  assumption,  in  his  memoir  on  the  pure-blood 
Arab  horse  in  Syria,  Palestine,  Egypt,  and  the  Arabian  deserts  ;  ^  but  then,  he  was 
a  horse-buyer,  not  a  horse-breeder,  and  had  made  it  his  profession  to  seek  for 
commissions  from  foreign  Governments  for  the  purchase  of  Arab  stallions.  No- 
body who  knows  the  difliculty  of  this  question  will  be  too  sure  about  it.  Of  course, 
one  horse  may  yield  a  greater  progeny  in  a  year  than  a  shipload  of  mares  will  do 
in  ten  ;  but  this  is  the  only  light  in  which  it  is  safe  to  regard  the  sire  as  the  more 
valuable.      European  authorities  in  the  science  of  breeding  now  reckon  it  one  of 


'  The  Prophet  said.  Let  not  the  Kd-dJii  judge  wJieji 
he  is  angry.  And  again.  When  one  who  is  standi?tg 
waxes  angry,  let  him  sit  downj  if  his  q7iger  abide, 
let  him  sleeps  <^nd  if  angry  still,  let  him  perform  the 
ablutions.   And  once  again,  Foigive  thy  servant  seventy 


times  in  one  day. 

^  Their  names  were  ;  SA.KB  =  rtmning  like  water  j 
SAB-SAH  =  a  g>-eat  swi>nmer — i.e.,  galloper  ;  and  MUR- 
TA-Jiz  =  Thunderer,  or  perhaps  Neigher. 

^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  \%, passim. 


CHAP.  I.  ON   THE    ORIGIN   OF   THE  ARABIAN  BREED.  231 

the  methods  of  nature  that  a  well-bred  animal  will  mark  his,  or  her,  stock  more  surely 
and  considerably  than  an  under-bred  one.  They  even  quote  instances  showing  that, 
when  both  parents  strongly  exhibit  a  given  character,  the  offspring  do  not  inherit  it 
so  surely  as  when  only  one  parent  is  so  characterised.  Accordingly,  Governments 
having  possessions  in  which  the  horse  stock  is  degenerate,  incur  the  enormous 
expense  of  collecting  foreign  stallions,  of  various  classes,  for  its  improvement ;  but 
the  results  are  seldom  published.  At  all  events,  these  are  not  matters  on  which 
evidence  need  be  looked  for  among  the  Arabs.  Not  the  improvement,  but  the 
preservation,  of  a  breed  occupies  them  ;  and  their  ideal  method  of  accomplishing 
their  object  is  by  the  pairing  of  animals  of  equal  purity. 

How  then  comes  it,  the  reader  may  here  inquire,  that,  in  telling  the  pedigrees 
of  their  horses,  they  give  the  mare  pre-eminence  ;  exactly  as  if  we  should  describe 
a  foal  by  Melbourne,  out  of  Queen  Mary,  as  a  "  Queen  Mary  "  colt  or  filly,  instead 
of,  as  we  do,  a  "  Melbourne"  one  ? 

The  masses  who  liken  the  mare  to  a  vase,  out  of  which  only  what  is  put  into 
it  can  be  taken,  are  more  given  to  talking  about  subjects  than  considering  them. 
Guarmani  is  one  of  the  few  exceptions  to  this  statement.  In  bringing  out  his  theory 
that  the  regeneration  of  the  equine  breeds  of  the  world  depends  on  crossing  them 
with  Arabian  stallions,  he  rejects  the  common  account  that  desert  pedigrees  begin 
with  mares.  He  says  that  the  youngling  is  reckoned  to  its  dam's  family  only  when 
strain  has  been  mixed  with  strain,  and  the  dam  is  held  to  be  inferior  to  the  sire.  It 
is  right  to  take  his  word  for  it,  that  in  his  wide  peregrinations  he  saw  or  heard  of 
people  who  did  so.  But  in  regard  to  the  genuine  Arabs,  it  would  be  affectation  to 
attach  importance  to  a  view  so  much  in  conflict  with  all  the  information  which  comes 
from  other  sources.  The  only  animals  that  we  have  ever  heard  called  by  their  sire's 
family  name  in  the  desert  have  been  those  which  the  Bedouin  describe  as  "  not 
horses"  but  "  sons  of  horses" — that  is,  got  by  a  first-class  sire  out  of  an  inferior  mare. 

It  has  been  seen  that  the  tent-dwelling  Arabs,  In  arranging  their  marriages, 
attach  equal  importance  to  purity  of  blood  on  both  sides.  The  head  of  one  of  our 
"  oldest "  families  may  wed  a  girl  of  unknown  origin,  without  the  supposed  soundness 
of  his  line  being  thereby  affected.  But  if  a  Bedouin  Arab  were  to  do  so,  the  ofifspring 
would  not  be  considered  genuine  representatives  of  his  stock.  Precisely  the  same 
view,  neither  more  nor  less,  vmderlles  the  desert  rule  of  horse-breeding ;  and  it  is 
quite  unjustifiable  to  Infer  from  the  Arabs  reckoning  their  horses  to  dams  and  grand- 
dams,  that  they  attribute  a  greater  part  in  reproduction  to  one  parent  than  to  the 
other.  The  reader  who  has  followed  us  thus  far,  does  not  need  to  be  reminded  of 
the  reasons  which  make  the  nomad  hold  to  his  mare  as  others  do  to  a  field  or 
garden,  and  object  to  sell  her  to  persons  who  will  carry  her  off  altogether,  even 
when  he  will  sell  what  he  calls  "  a  leg  of  her  " — that  is,  a  certain  share  in  her  pro- 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK   IV. 


duce — to  a  neighbour.  The  Hi-san,  or  horse,  he  who  "  swalloweth  the  ground  with 
fierceness  and  rage,"^  is  in  his  element  in  pitched  battles;  but  the  mare's  gentler 
qualities  make  her  the  more  suitable  in  desert  hurly-burly.  She  neighs  but  little, 
and  possesses  other  advantages  which  are  important  to  the  rider.  When  Chivalry 
married  the  horse  to  Knighthood  in  Europe,  horse-breeding  was  favoured  by  the 
assignment  of  the  mares  to  peaceful  labour.^  In  the  same  way  in  Arabia,  the  use 
of  mares  in  preference  to  horses  checks  their  being  sold  for  export.  But,  like  all 
one-sided  systems,  both  methods  have  drawbacks.  If  the  one  imparted  to  the 
mares  of  feudal  England  too  much  of  the  farm-stable  character,  the  other  gives 
less  than  fair-play  to  the  colt  division  of  the  Arabs'  horse-stock.  In  modern  times 
we  know  better.  For  every  Sir  Hugo  which  is  made  known  by  the  Derby,  a  La 
Fleche  is  brought  into  notice  by  the  Oaks.  If  our  prize-winners  be  not  the  off- 
spring of  "  good  fathers  and  good  mothers,"  it  is  not  for  want  of  highly-tried  material 
equally  on  both  sides. 

The  real  explanation  of  the  dams  always  standing  first  in  the  pedigrees  of 
desert  horses  is  writ  large  in  the  preceding  sentences.  Seeing  that  the  mares  do  all 
the  ghaz-u  work,  it  naturally  follows  that  it  is  they,  and  not  their  brothers,  who, 
through  the  display   of  superiority,  as  we  say,    "  found  families." 


The  chief  object,  so  far,  has  been  to  separate  the  protean  stories  of  the 
townsmen  from  the  lore  of  the  tent-folk  about  Arabian  horses.  Many  may  con- 
sider the  one  class  of  material  not  less  unprofitable  than  the  other ;  but,  with  due 
deference,  we  cannot  in  our  own  mind  bring  down  the  relations  of  the  Bedouin 
to  the  same  level  with  the  confused  mixtures  of  the  jam-bazes.  At  any  rate,  it 
is  impossible  faithfully  to  echo  the  voices  of  the  desert  concerning  the  Arabian 
horse,  while  shunning  all  paths  where  the  light  is  dubious. 

It  was  seen  just  now  how  the  Bedouin,  when  they  recite  a  pedigree,  set  out 
with  the  dam.  But  this  is  only  half  of  the  story.  It  is  a  desert  tenet  that  all  the 
stock  of  approved  lineage  now  existing  has  for  its  common  root  the  mare  of  a 
certain,  or  rather  very  uncertain,  d-j{iz,  or  old  woman.  We  have  never  seen  a 
Bedouin  Arab  who  pretended  to  know  either  the  old  woman's  name  or  when  she 
flourished.  The  legend -spinners  have  been  at  work  on  both  points,  but  their 
tales  are  not  worth  repeating.  Of  course,  it  is  open  to  any  one  who  pleases  to 
relegate  the  crone  and  her  mare  to  the  same  prolific  region  out  of  which  Old  Mother 
Hubbard  and  her  dog  proceeded.  But  if  the  concurrent  belief  of  all  the  Bedouin 
nations  count  for  anything,  this  would  be  going  a  stage  too  far. 


1  Job  xxxix.  24. 

2  Bede  (born  c.  673),  to  whom  we  owe  the  most  and 
the  best  of  our  knowledge  of  early  EngUsh  history, 


states  that,  in  630,  when  the  bishops,  who  until  then 
were  wont  to  go  on  foot,  took  to  riding,  they  used 
mares  as  a  mark  of  humility. 


CHAP.  I.  ON   THE    ORIGIN  OF   THE  ARABIAN  BREED.  233 

Here  it  is  essential  that  we  should  gain  some  idea  of  the  two  very  common 
terms  of  desert  tradition,  Ku-hai-la  and  Al  Kham-sa. 


Ku-HAI-LA. 

Arabic  has  the  epithet  ku-hai-ldn,  the  feminine  of  which  is  ku-hai-la,  in 
construction,  hi-hai-lat.  The  mare  just  now  brought  up  from  the  limbo  of  an- 
tiquity is  immortal  in  desert  legend,  under  the  name  of  Kit,-hai-la-t7i  7  d-jilz,  or 
the  Kuhaila  of  the  old  zvoman.  And  all  the  authentic  stock  of  Najd,  which  is 
supposed  to  be  descended  from  her,  bears  the  appellative,  at  once  comprehensive 
and  distinctive,  of  Ku-hai-lan. 

Now  Ku-hai-lan  is  an  epithet  from  ht-hail,  diminutive  of  kuhl,  which 
appears  in  Europe  as  the  name  of  the  prince  of  antiseptics,  al-cohol.^  Among 
the  simpler  meanings  of  hihl  is  blackness,'^-'  or  blueness,  as  of  the  eye  or  heavens  ; 
and  we  think  it  so  probable  as  to  be  almost  certain  that  "  Ku-hai-lan,"  as 
applied  to  the  Arabian  blood-horse,  is  an  example  of  names  derived  from  colour. 
In  this  breed,  and  especially  in  white  and  grey  horses,  the  skin  is  characterised  by  a 
dark-blue  tinge,  which  appears  through  the  hairy  covering.  The  large  expressive 
eye,  standing  out  from  its  socket,  suggests,  in  its  lustrous  blackness,  a  body  inter- 
mediate between  jet  and  diamond.  Hairless  surfaces,  not  unlike  blue  or  black 
velvet,  encircle  the  eyes,  and  overspread  the  face  and  muzzle.  No  doubt  it  is 
possible  to  propose  different  explanations  of  "  Ku-hai-lan."  Among  the  concrete 
meanings  of  ktihl  and  kit-hall  are  (i)  antimony,  (2)  tar.  The  coffee-house 
story  that  the  eyes  and  eyebrows  of  the  ''  Kit-hai-la-ttt  7  d-jiiz"  were  beautified 
with  antimony,  after  a  common  Eastern  fashion,  is  too  trivial  to  be  worth  con- 
sidering. But  if  it  pleases  any  one  to  associate  the  Arab  mare  of  very  early  times 
with  kit-hail,  in  the  sense  of  wood-tar,  there  is  nothing  absurd  in  such  a  supposition. 
We  know  how  dependent  pastoral  nations  are  on  this  product.  It  is  stated  by  Lord 
Macaulay  of  his  Celtic  ancestors,  that  their  "  hair  and  skin  would  have  put  to  the 
proof  the  philosophy  of  any  one  visiting  them  ;  "  and  that  some  of  them  would  have 
been  found  "  covered  with  cutaneous  eruptions,  and  others  would  have  been  smeared 
with   tar  like  sheep."  ^     There  is   no  authority  to  justify  the  application   of  this 


1  Similarly,  in  alchemy,  algebra,  cipher,  assay,  alkali, 
alembic,  and  other  survivals,  there  are  traces  of  the 
sojourn  with  the  Arabs  of  sciences  which  they  no 
longer  cultivate. 

2  Whether  coal,  the  kol  (in  German,  kohle)  of  the 
Teutonic  nations,  likewise  houille,  in  France  and 
Belgium  mineral  coal,  admit  of  identification  with  kohl 


of  Semites,  is  a  question  for  philologists. 

3  History  of  England,  ch.  xii.,  where  this  doggerel, 
by  one  Cleland,  is  quoted  as  authority  : — 

' '  The  reason  is,  they're  smeared  with  tar, 
Which  doth  defend  their  head  and  neck, 
Just  as  it  doth  their  sheep  protect." 


234 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK  IV. 


description  to  the  Arabian  Bedouin.  These  certainly  have  their  own  share  of  skin 
diseases.  During  visits  to  them,  we  have  been  shocked  by  the  unsalved  sores  which 
the  faUing  aside  of  a  vest  has  uncovered  in  the  apparently  robust.  They  may  also 
be  found  redolent  enough  of  unguents,  after  a  bout  of  dressing  over  mangy  camels ; 
but  we  never  saw  one  of  them  who  had  himself  been  rubbed.  Not  to  pursue  this 
subject,  it  appears  from  references  in  the  old  poetry  that  the  primitive  Arabs 
obtained  tar  by  a  rude  process  of  wood  distillation.  A'n-tar  compares  the  sweat 
which  exuded  from  his  riding-camel's  dhif-7'd,  or  part  behind  the  ear,  first  with 
"  rtibb"  or  inspissated  juice,^  and  then  with  "  hi-haii,"  or  liquid  pitch  bubbling  in 
a  caldron.  Another  and  contemporary  ra-wi-a  ^  depicts  himself  as  shunned  by 
all  his  clan,  so  that  he  was  as  solitary  as  a  camel  besmeared  with  pitch.  The  "  rosy- 
coated  "  Ku-hai-la  of  the  modern  period  may  rarely  need  a  tarry  dressing ;  but 
the  earl}'  mothers  of  the  breed  cannot  have  approached  the  ideal  so  closely.  The 
objection  to  all  this  is,  that  it  makes  too  great  a  demand  on  the  imagination.  In  our 
opinion  it  is  best  to  consider  that  the  stock  of  Ku-hail  owes  its  name  to  certain 
characteristics  of  colouring  which  it  possesses. 


Al  Kham-sa. 

In  Arabic,  The  Five.  This  term  has  already  met  us,  as  denoting  the  fingers 
of  the  right  hand.^  Another  use  of  it  is.  The  Five  essential  plenishings,  of  carpet, 
nose-ring,  neck-chain,  bracelets,  and  travelling-bag,*  which  every  nomad  wooer 
presents  to  his  betrothed.  Here  it  means,  The  Five  primary  ramifications  of 
the  central  stem  of  Ku-hai-lan.  During  a  long  residence  in  El  I'rak,  and  on  many 
journeys,  we  have  made  constant  inquiry  on  this  subject  from  the  Bedouin. 
One  undeviating  answer  has  been  given  on  two  points  :  first,  that  every  noble 
strain  in  the  Arabian  desert  goes  back  to  the  "  Ku-hai-la  of  the  old  woman "  ; 
and  further,  that  it  does  so  through  one  or  othe^'  of  the  lines  which  constittite 
Al  Kham-sa.  The  five  main  compartments,  so  to  call  them,  of  the  great  con- 
solidation which  the  Arabs  call  Ku-hai-lan  are  not  the  same  in  all  narrations. 
The  table  opposite  shows  them  as  they  are  usually  recounted.  No  Ba-da-wi 
ever  by  any  chance  omits  Ku-hai-lan.  This,  as  has  been  seen,  is  the  parent 
trunk.      The  four  great  branches,   as    considerable    as    itself,   which   have  grown 


1  It  may  have  been  in  Spain  that  the  Arabic  rubb, 
Enghsh  rob,  first  became  in  Europe  a  name  for  fruit- 
syrup. 

^  Ta-ra-fa. 


'   V.  ante,  p.  191,  fn.  2. 

^  Not  the  compHcated  case  so  well  known  to  civih- 
sation  ;  but  a  hold-all,  which  they  suspend  from  the 
gha-bit,  or  camel-pillion. 


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236  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

out  of  it,  are  not  held  to  render  it  undistinguishable,  far  less  to  dwarf  it.  Perhaps 
it  is  proper  to  mention  Palgrave's  dissent  from  this  representation.  According  to 
his  view,  the  uncontaminated  Arabian  stock  has  never  known  subdivision.  He 
stoutly  asserts  that  partitions  of  it  are  but  modern  and  degenerate  features,  which 
are  met  with  in  the  deserts  round  Baghdad  and  Mosul,  "  almost,  often  wholly,  un- 
known even  by  name  in  Najd."  ^  It  would,  however,  have  been  no  more  than  just 
to  himself  if  he  had  produced  the  evidence  leading  up  to  this  conclusion.  The  well- 
known  tendency  of  all  breeds  to  split  into  varieties,  like  languages  into  dialects, 
weighs  heavily  against  it.  It  is  incredible  that  any  breed  should  have  run  on  for 
ages  without  breaking  into  strains.  And,  moreover,  it  has  been  seen  how  all  the 
nations  now  occupying  Shi-mi-ya  and  AI  Ja-zi-ra  originally  issued  from  the  immense 
native  land  of  nomads,  Najd,  freighted  with  their  desert  stock  and  lore.  Unques- 
tionably many  new  ramifications  of  Al  Kham-sa  are  due  to  these  migrations  ;  but 
that  is  a  different  matter.  For  the  ordinary  reader,  the  names  in  our  table  can  be  no 
more  than  foreign  curiosities  ;  but  points  are  involved  in  them  which  buyers  of  Arab 
horses  should  notice.  The  key  to  the  table  is,  to  understand  by  its  radical  group- 
name,  Ku-hai-lAn,  what  we  express  by  TJioroiighbred ;  to  compare  its  five  secondary 
lines  with  the  three  stocks  which  are  called  in  our  Stud-book  after  the  Darley 
Arabian,  the  Byerly  Turk,  and  the  Godolphin  Arabian  respectively ;  and  then  to 
consider  all  the  minor  ramifications  as  corresponding  with  the  Waxy,  Orville,  Buz- 
zard, Blacklock,  Tramp,  and  other  strains  of  our  racing  calendar.  Thus  Ku-hail, 
or  Ku-HAi-LAN,  denotes  the  breed,  in  Arabic  nis-ba,  or  nasi ;  and  every  other  name, 
a  greater  or  smaller  offshoot  of  it,  with  Arabs  a  ra-san  (lit.  rope),  also  mar-bat.  All 
these  terms  float  in  the  breath  of  Bedouin,  and  it  is  chiefly  foreigners  who  put  them 
on  paper.  Jam-bazes  and  other  townsmen,  little  as  they  know  about  them,  make 
much  use  of  them  when  they  are  recommending  or  selling  horses.  It  greatly  im- 
presses an  Englishman  to  hear  a  high-sounding  epithet  which  is  unintelligible  to  him 
reverently  given  for  pedigree,  to  a  patrician-like  animal,  by  men  as  strange  of  garb 
and  aspect  as  any  of  those  in  Fenimore  Cooper's  novels.  But  he  who  would  buy  a 
horse,  and  not  a  name,  needs  a  word  of  warning  as  to  this.  In  the  first  place,  the 
common  representation  that  the  Arabs  do  not  romance  about  a  horse's  pedigree 
does  not  apply  to  the  jam-bazes.  And  next,  even  supposing  the  pedigree  which  is 
given  to  be  authentic,  it  guarantees  no  more  than  that  the  subject  of  it  is  fitted  for 
Al  ghaz-u.  It  is  perfectly  true  that,  within  the  desert,  the  names  referred  to  consti- 
tute at  once  the  proofs  and  the  subdivisions  of  the  term  a-sil ;  and  so  far  they  are 
important — to  those  who  understand  them.  Of  course,  in  the  Arabian  stock,  as 
in  that  of  Herod,  Eclipse,  and  Matchem,  a  horse  may  be,  and  indeed  is  sure  to  be, 

^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  19,  vol.  ii.  p.  241. 


CHAP.  I.  ON   THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE  ARABIAN  BREED.  237 

mixed  of  sh^ain,  while  not  outside  of  the  breed  or  blood.  The  desert  horseman  is 
not  satisfied  with  the  information  that  a  colt  or  filly  is,  for  example,  a  Sak-la-wi, 
but  insists  on  ascertaining  what  his  strain  is  in  the  Sak-ld-wt  family.  Not  even 
Ktt,-hai-ldn,  though  in  a  sense  generic — i.e.,  of  itself  descriptive  of  the  genuine 
Arabian — is  sufi^ciently  explicit  for  him.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  if  the  animal 
be  of  good  repute,  more  must  be  known  of  his  breeding  than  that ;  and  he  will  not 
be  accepted  till  every  detail  is  satisfactorily  established. 

In  regard  to  the  words  which  fill  our  table,  practically  they  are  proper  names. 
Nevertheless,  they  are  sound  Arabic  forms.  In  so  far  as  their  derivations  are  ap- 
parent, they  show  that,  just  as  very  many  of  the  names  of  the  Bedouin  depict  their 
lives  and  qualities,  so  do  those  of  their  strains  of  horses  embody  the  ideal  charac- 
teristics of  their  coursers.  Here  it  may  be  mentioned  that  the  Arabs,  with  a  fine 
respect  for  humanity,  do  not  give  men's  or  women's  names  to  the  lower  animals. 
If  they  had  their  sporting  newspapers,  the  reader  would  be  spared  such  items  as 
that  some  famous  living  preacher,  or  party  leader,  had  "  turned  a  roarer,"  or  un- 
dergone some  other  alteration.  With  them,  as  with  us,  men's  fancies  or  caprices, 
traits  or  peculiarities  of  appearance,  or,  as  in  Eclipse's  case,  events  which  happened 
about  the  time  of  foaling,  have  suggested  names  for  mares,  and  these  names  have 
become  traditional.  When  a  mare's  name  is  clearly  an  epithet,  like  Mi-ni-ki, 
meaning  long-necked,  it  is  sometimes  an  open  question  whether  the  lono-  neck  or 
other  feature  belonged  to  her  or  to  her  owner.  A'n-tar's  charger  has  come  down 
as  Abjar,  or  big-belhed ;  for  Arab  horsemen  know  how  much  depends  on  the  diges- 
tive organs.  At  the  present  time,  one  of  the  most  renowned  mares  in  Arabia  is 
A-mir  Muhammad's  Mu-ni-ra,  a  name  very  like  the  Lantern  of  the  Australasian 
stud-book. 

The  problem  of  whether  a  colt  which  is  truly  of  Al  Kham-sa  necessarily  sur- 
passes, in  practical  qualities,  one  which  is  not,  will  in  due  course  be  considered.  In 
passing  from  the  two  great  terms  of  desert  nomenclature,  Ku-hai-lan  and  Al 
Kham-sa,  it  may  be  worth  while  here  to  repeat  that  all  the  merit  which  is  derivable 
from  considerable  antiquity  and  from  wide  recognition  unquestionably  belongs  to 
The  Five/«?'  excellence,  and  to  the  Imi-dud,  or  approved,  strains  and  sub-strains  into 
which  they  now  branch  out. 


It  is  next  proposed  to  look  for  a  rational  view  of  the  derivation  of  the 
Arabian  stock.  The  results  of  the  discussions  which  appear  in  sportino-  journals 
about  the  origins  of  comparatively  recent  breeds  are  so  uncertain,  that  it  may 
seem  absurd  to  attempt  to  go  too  far  back,    in   regard  to   the  breed   of  horses 


238 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK   IV. 


standing  first  in  seniority  of  all  the  high-bred  coursers  of  the  world.  Never- 
theless, if  we  cannot  expect  to  find  full  information,  there  are  at  least  traces  to 
which  attention  may  be  drawn.  The  question  of  when  Arabia  first  received  the 
Horse  has  already  occurred.  The  other  day  a  cavalry  officer  of  the  Osmanli 
recalled  it,  on  happening  to  notice  this  picture  in  a  book  which  was  on  the 
table  : — 


Out  of  respect  to  his  religious  teachers,  he  believed  in  the  Jinn  and  other 
marvels,  but  he  could  not  accept  the  Centaur.  His  reason  was  the  practical  one, 
that  if  Allah  had  created  so  superior  an  animal,  the  biped  race  of  Adam  would 
have  been  exterminated.  And  truly,  the  most  sensible  account  of  this  particular 
representation  of  mythology  is  that  which  connects  it  with  some  historic  episode 
involving  the  subjugation  of  peasants  by  barbaric  riders.^  It  is  known  that, 
from  the  earliest  down  to  comparatively  modern  times,  hordes  of  equestrian 
warriors  and  archers,  pouring  westward,  have  formed  dynasties  in  many  parts 
of  the  world  ;  but  there  is  no  proof  that  Arabia  proper  ever  felt  the  tread  of 
Mongol  horses.  Nineteenth  -  century  research  finds  evidence  in  philology  that 
the  horse  was  known  to  the  Aryans  before  they  separated ;  but  in  regard  to 
the    Semites,    the   words    for    horse    which    appear    in    their    several    languages  ^ 


1  The  Scyths,  or  Caucasian  nations  of  ancient  Asia, 
whose  march  was  from  beyond  the  Jaxartes,  down  the 
Oxus  and  the  Indus,  and  across  the  Tigris  and  the 
Euphrates  to  the  Bosphorus  and  the  Nile,  are  thus 
alluded  to  by  Herodotus  (B.C.  4S4-443)  : — 

"  Having  neither  cities  nor  forts,  and  carrying  their 
dwellings  with  them  wherever  they  go  ;  accustomed, 
moreover,  one  and  all,  to  shoot  from  horsebacks  and 
living,  not  by  husbandry,  but  on  their  cattle, — how  can 


they  fail  of  being  unconquerable  ? " 

What  were  the  Boer  marksmen  who  hit  so  hard  at 
Majuba  Hill  but  fighting  centaurs,  trained  to  arms  of 
precision  instead  of  bows  and  arrows? 

2  For  instance,  in  Arabic,  the  current  terms  for 
mares  and  horses,  hi-sdn,  fa-ras,  khail,  and,  with 
the  Bedouin  (as  in  Esther  viii.  10),  ra-mak,  are  less 
names  than  epithets. 


CHAP.   I. 


ON   THE    ORIGIN  OF   THE  ARABIAN  BREED. 


239 


have  not  been  held  to  justify  a  similar  inference.  The  allusions  to  "horse- 
hoofs"  in  Judges  v.  22,  and  to  "horses  very  many"  in  Joshua  xi.  4,  are 
accounted  the  earliest  notices  of  this  animal  which  are  contained  in  Semite 
literature.  On  these  and  other  grounds,  it  has  been  suggested  that  the  Semitic 
peoples,  as  a  whole,  were  indebted  for  the  horse  to  the  Iranian  upland  which 
comprises  Persia ;  but  this  is  only  a  conjecture.^  Restricting  the  view  to  Arabia, 
Sprenger  considers  that  the  Arabs  possessed  but  few  horses  down  to  the  period 
of  the  Flight.2  The  tradition  that  A'li's^  charger,  Mai-mun,  was  of  Egyptian 
breeding,  is  sometimes  used  to  support  this  opinion  ;  but  if  the  fact  that  so 
many  of  our  own  princes  ride  Arabs  were  hereafter  to  be  cited  as  proof  that,  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  Europe  was  poor  in  horses,  the  cases  would  be  parallel. 
In  A'li's  time,  Egypt  held  the  same  high  place  as  a  school  for  cavalry  which  she 
did  at  the  date  of  the  31st  chapter  of  Isaiah.  It  is  observed  by  a  recent  authority 
that  "literature  affords  no  trace  of  the  horse,  as  indigenous  to  Arabia,  prior  to 


about    the    beginning    of    the    fifth    century    a.d. 


"  4 


Without    repeating    what 


has  been  stated  on  this  point  in  another  connection,^  it  may  just  be  said 
that  the  period  at  which  an  animal  first  gets  into  a  literature  is  not  neces- 
sarily that  of  its  first  appearance  on  the  actual  stage.  When,  as  has  happened 
in  most  countries,  compositions  of  the  pre-Iiterary  epoch  are  delivered  to  penmen 
who  come  later,  it  is  impossible  to  tell  how  many  similar  treasures  have  lived 
and  died  in  remoter  ages.  Evidence  drawn  from  the  earliest  known  Arabian 
poems  is  already  before  the  reader,  showing  how  familiar  the  sportsmen  of  Najd 
were  with  the  points  of  a  good  horse  at  the  beginning  of  our  sixth  century.     The 


1  There  is  at  least  no  lack  of  evidence  that  the 
horse  was  highly  esteemed  in  Persia  in  early  times. 
For  example,  the  custom  still  traceable,  of  granting 
the  rights  of  sanctuary  to  all  who  take  refuge  at  the 
foot  of  a  horse,  or  in  a  stable,  must  be  very  ancient. 
The  Persians  are  excelled  by  many  as  horse-breeders, 
but  by  none  in  the  art  of  caring  for  horses,  and  ob- 
taining from  them  a  full  amount  of  work.  Their 
stable  management  takes  no  account  of  many  things 
which  we  consider  important.  But  at  least  feed- 
ing, clothing,  and  working  are  well  understood  in 
Persia. 

"■■  Lcb.  Moh.,  iii.  139,  140.  Compare  Ignazio  Guidi's 
paper,  "  Delia  sede  primitiva  dei  popoli  Semitici," 
in  the  TraJisactions  of  the  Accademia  dei  Lincei, 
1878-79. 

'  A  reference  to  the  actual  A'li  will  be  found  in 
art.  SUN-Ni  AND  Snt-l',  Ind.  I.  The  A'li  of  romance 
is  not  so  easily  represented.     Religionists  style  him. 


the  last  a?td  "worthiest  of  primitive  Muslim;  him  who 
attained  to  where  the  flood  of  El  Is-ldm  collects;  and 
reached  the  first  springs  thereof;  and  tasted  the  pier  est 
of  it.  Bookmen  ascribe  to  him  e\'ery  sententious, 
didactic  saying,  especially  those  in  verse,  the  author- 
ship of  which  is  unknown.  As  a  military  leader,  he 
is  held  to  personify  the  force  and  passion  of  early 
Islamism.  El  Kar-rar,  or  The  Returner  agaiti 
and  again  to  the  charge,  is  one  of  his  epithets.  His 
exploits  are  magnified  in  numerous  Arthurian  legends. 
His  good  horse  fills  the  place  in  Eastern  story  and 
pictorial  I'epresentation  which  the  marvellous  steed 
Bayard  does  in  the  Charlemagne  cycle  of  fiction  ;  and 
his  two-edged  sword,  "  Dhu  V  fa-kar" — a  trophy  and 
favourite  weapon  of  the  Prophet — is  the  Excalibur  of 
Arabian  and  Persian  romance. 

*  Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  xii.  p.  181  in  fn.  i. 

^   V.  ante,  p.  27. 


240 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK   IV. 


following  passage  from  the  same  source,   and  of  about  the  same  period,   is  even 


more  sisfnificant  : — 

And  on  morn  of  raid  and  melee, 

Comrades  true,  the  mares  we  rear ; 
Never  lost  we  yet  a  filly, 

But  a  rescuer  was  near. 
Like  an  heirloom  long  descended, 

In  our  tents  their  lineage  runs ; 
And  when  time  for  us  is  ended. 

We  shall  leave  it  to  our  sons. 

When  they  lead  the  mares  to  pasture. 

Ye  may  hear  our  white  ones  ^  say, 
Not  for  us  the  lord  and  master," 

Who  is  fearful  of  the  fray  ! 

— A'mr. 

That  is,  not  only  did  Najd  possess  highly  cultivated  strains  of  horses 
some  1400  years  ago,  but  then,  as  now,  such  had  been  handed  down  by  many 
generations  of  horsemen.  Modern  scholarship  is  so  far  from  doubting  the 
authenticity  of  the  pre-Islamic  ballads,  that  it  undertakes  the  task  of  editing 
them.^  Thus,  in  addition  to  brushing  aside  numerous  phantasmal  structures 
about  the  origin  of  the  Arabian  breed,  we  arrive  at  firm  ground  in  regard 
to  its  antiquity.  Next,  in  the  absence  of  actual  knowledge  or  records,  analogy 
may  be  asked  for  suggestions  on  the  point  of  how  the  race  of  Ku-hai-lan  may 
be  supposed  to  have  been  produced.  The  first  words  on  the  first  page  of  a 
recent  book  on  the  Dandie  Dinmont  terrier  *  are,  that  the  "  exact  origin "  of  the 
breed  "  is  practically  unknown  ";  in  spite  of  its  being  no  farther  back  than  "  the  first 
Sabbath  of  the  year  1820"  that  James  Davidson,  of  Hindlee  in  Roxburghshire,  the 
original,  in  some  respects,  of  the  immortal  Dinmont,  was  gathered  to  his  fathers.^ 
Now,  it  is  not  known  whether  Davidson,  like  the  late  Rev.  John  Russell,^  and 
many  others,  made  his  breed  of  terriers  out  of  the  materials  round  him,  or  received 
it  from  the  Border  gipsies.  The  facts,  so  far  as  they  can  be  traced,  best  fit  the 
latter  view — that  is,  that  the  ochre,  or  "  Mustard,"  and  the  greyish  black,  or 
"  Pepper,"  terriers  of  Liddesdale  were  as  essentially  the  products  of  nomad  life  as 
the  Ku-hai-lans  of  Araby.  But  whether  the  breed  was  made  by  basket-weaving, 
otter-hunting,  and  poaching  fortune-tellers,  or  by  mountain  farmers,  is  immaterial. 


1  I.e.,  the  fair-skinned  Arab  women,  of  honour- 
able lineage,  as  distinct  from  those  of  mixed 
blood. 

2  In  the  original,  bti  I  (or  "Baal"))  "^'^  Ind.  I. 
'  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  35. 

*  By  Chas.  Cook,  Edin.  :   David  Douglas,  18S5. 
^  Vide  Note  C  to  ch.  xxiii.  of  Guy  Manneri7ig. 


•^  V.  The  Outdoor  life  of  the  Rev.  John  Russell: 
London,  1SS3.  A  point  worth  noticing  is,  that  both 
Mr  Russell's  breed  of  terriers  and  the  still  more 
famous  "Mustards"  and  "Peppers"  derived  their 
pedigrees,  Uke  the  Ku-hails  of  Araby,  from  a  mother, 
not  a  father  :  v.  book  just  cited,  p.  61  ;  et  Horcc  Sub- 
seciva,  by  Dr  J.  Brown,  1S62  edit.,  p.  200. 


CHAP.  I.  ON   THE    ORIGIN  OF   THE  ARABIAN  BREED.  241 

Clearly,  necessity  was  the  mother  of  it,  and  use  helped  to  shape  it.  That  is,  the 
inhabitants  of  a  wild  country,  abounding  in  hill-foxes  and  badgers,  bred  a  race .  of 
terriers  which,  when  properly  entered,  excelled  in  the  rough  sports  depicted  in  the 
25th  and  26th  chapters  of  Guy  Mannering.  The  case  now  under  consideration  is 
not  dissimilar.  At  an  early  time  the  Bedouin  Arab  must  gradually  have  formed  his 
breed  of  horses  in  accordance  with  the  sure  decree,  ''  Boni  et  fortes  bonis  et  fortihi.s 
creant7i,r."  If  special  and  exclusive  breeding,  directed  to  a  certain  object,  explain  our 
English  race-horse,  there  is  no  need  to  go  further  for  the  secret  of  the  Arab's  foray- 
mare.  This  view  is  not  in  conflict  with  that  which  has  elsewhere  been  presented  of 
the  Bad-u's  weak  points  as  a  horse-breeder.  One  may  exercise  much  skill  in  choosing 
the  parents  of  each  fresh  generation  out  of  the  preceding  one,  without  possessing  a 
full  idea  of  the  more  important  questions  which  are  here  involved.  Darwin  cites  it 
as  an  illustration  of  the  natural  tendency  to  preserve  the  useful,  that  the  savages  of 
Terra  del  Fuego  in  times  of  famine  save  their  cattle  and  kill  off  their  old  women. 
And  so  with  nations  living  by  the  chase,  the  first  rude  kind  of  "  selection  "  is  to  keep 
the  likeliest  puppies  in  a  litter  when  they  will  not  rear  all  of  them.  To  do  this 
with  the  idea  of  "breeding"  comes  much  later;  but  the  Arabs  must  very  early 
have  given  their  adherence  to  "heredity."  During  a  great  many  generations,  as 
was  just  now  seen,  it  has  formed  a  part  of  their  system  that  a  mare  of  renown  may 
add  a  new  strain,  called  by  her  name,  to  one  of  the  sub-groups  of  Al  Kham-sa. 
This  kind  of  selection  may  not  be,  in  the  full  scientific  sense,  "  methodical,"  but  it  is 
tolerably  practical.  In  applying  it,  the  Bedouin  are  aided  by  considerable  powers 
of  perception.  Their  code  about  blood  forms  a  gathering  up,  it  should  be 
remembered,  of  the  results  of  their  experience.  A  mare's  "standing  pretty,"  as 
the  late  Sir  Tatton  Sykes  used  to  call  it,  is  one  of  many  other  points  which  are 
beyond  them  ;  for  galloping,  not  standing,  is  what  they  would  breed  up  to.  But  a 
short  and  upright  pastern  is  an  eyesore  to  them  ;  and  equally  so  too  long  a  one, 
especially  when  it  is  either  too  oblique  or  too  upright.  The  greyhound  girth,  well 
spread  ribs,  and  breadth  behind  the  saddle,  all  delight  them.  Coffee-house  Arabs, 
when  they  look  over  the  half-brother  of  Kirkham  and  Narellan  ^  which  is  now  with 
us  in  Baghdad,  are  very  uncomplimentary.  A  Turkish  Pasha  lately  said  that  he  more 
resembled  a  she-camel  than  a  horse.  But  no  son  of  the  desert  ever  sees  him  without 
perceiving  that,  though  of  unknown  and  unaccountable  pedigree,  he  is  other  than  a 
commoner.  A  leader  of  the  Aeniza,  on  noticing  his  unsexed  state,  declared  that  he 
was  as  good  as  a  mare ;  and  that,  if  he  were  his,  he  would  sweep  the  board — that  is, 
an  enemy's  pastures — with  him !     In  truth,  however,  the  colt  referred  to  would  be  as 


1  V.  ante,  p.  195.     The  two  sons  of  Chester,  which 
the  late  Mr  White  of  Sydney  sent  to  Epsom  to  con- 

2  H 


test   the   classic   race   of  1S90,  were   named  by  him 
Kirkham  and  Narellan. 


242 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK    IV. 


out  of  his  element  in  Sha-mi-ya  as  Gulliver  was  in  Lilliput  and  Dr  Johnson  in  the 
Hebrides.  Supposing  him  to  be  ridden  out  in  the  bloom  of  condition,  the  ghaz-u 
would  go  one  way  and  he  another,  with  or  without  his  rider,  as  the  Fates  might  rule. 
If  he  survived  the  first  drought,  he  would  never  be  the  same  animal  afterwards.^ 
But  to  resume.  If  the  pairing  of  superior  animals  in  successive  generations  have 
made  the  Bedouin  Arab's  breed  of  horses,  a  favourable  result  has  been  promoted  by 
the  circumstance  that,  instead  of  having  many  points  to  aim  at,  his  one  idea  is  Al 
GHAZ-u.  What  gives  the  Arabian  his  speed,  length  of  stride,  and  staying  power  ? 
Whence  the  gamecock  throttle ;  flat,  well-laid,  muscular  shoulder ;  straight-dropped 
hind-leg,  with  great  thighs  and  hocks  ;  powerful  ligaments  ;  symmetrical  back  ;  and 
admirable  length,  in  proportion,  between  the  elbow  and  stifle-joints  .''  Breeding, 
we  all  know,  is  the  answer  ;  but  then,  what  does  that  mean  ?  Not  so  very  long  ago 
it  would  have  been  said  that  "breeding"  partly  represents  the  summation,  in  suc- 
ceeding generations,  of  all  the  characters  which  have  been  produced,  in  individual 
animals,  by  use  or  effort.  Darwin  thought  that  "acquired  characters,"  in  the  limited 
sense  of  the  effects  of  use  and  disuse  of  parts  and  organs,  are  in  some  cases  thus 
inherited  ;  but  later  investigators  otherwise  explain  the  facts  which  our  forefathers 
accepted  as  evidence  of  such  transmission.^  We  do  not  here  presume  to  discuss 
this  complex  question,  which  has  still  to  be  brought  to  the  test  of  experimental 
researches.  Of  course  every  one  admits  that,  for  example,  sinewy  fore-legs  are  due, 
in  the  individtial,  in  some  measure  at  least,  to  the  influence  of  work.  One  has  but 
to  take  his  stand  of  a  morning  near  the  gate  of  an  Arab  town,  and  observe  those 
who  ride  in  from  the  desert,  to  be  able  to  form  a  shrewd  guess,  from  the  proportions 
of  their  horses'  legs,  whether  they  and  their  nags  are  "sons  of  the  road"  or  idlers. 
The  conclusion  which  is  assailed  by  some  recent  writers  is,  that  this  greatness  of 
limb,  and  other  similar  characters,  after  having  been  acqtured  in  an  animal's  life- 
time, tend  to  reappear  in  the  progeny.  The  traditional  belief  that  the  case  is  so 
pervades  these  pages  ;  and  until  science  shall  finally  certify  her  conclusions,  it  is  best 
for  ordinary  people  not  to  be  too  scientific. 

There  is  another  assumption  on  which  the  foregoing  remarks  have  a  bearing, 


1  Since  the  above  passage  was  written,  the  subject 
of  it  has  become  well  known  on  the  Calcutta  race- 
course as  Ivo. 

^  E.g.,  the  refinement  of  the  tushes  in  the  wild 
boar's  domesticated  descendants  ;  and  the  different 
characters  of  the  breast,  wing,  and  leg-bones  in  the 
goose  that  cleaves  the  heavens  and  the  farmyard 
waddler  respectively.  India  affords  special  oppor- 
tunities for  observations  of  this  kind  in  the  human 
species,  owing  to  the  prevalent  custom,  particularly 


in  caste-bound  communities,  of  the  son  pursuing  the 
paternal  handicraft  or  occupation.  Those  who  accept 
Professor  Weismann's  theory,  according  to  which  the 
transmission  of  acquired  characters  is  impossible, 
argue  that  if  the  case  had  been  otherwise,  the  sinewy 
arms  of  the  village  blacksmith,  equally  with  the  clever 
fingers  of  the  watchmaker,  would  be  inherited  by  the 
younger  offspring  in  a  higher  degree  than  by  the 
older. 


CHAP   I. 


ON   THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE  ARABIAN  BREED. 


243 


and  that  is,  that  a  way  of  gallophig  with  straight  fore-legs  characterises  the  coursers 
of  Al  ghaz-u.  Certainly  a  considerable  number  of  the  desert  mares  exhibit  this 
pecuHar  action.  It  is  an  interesting  question  how  far  it  depends  on  every 
animal's  "  points  " ;  and  how  far  on  the  youngling's  forming  its  faster  paces  in  the 
grip  of  a  desert  horseman,  and  over  level  spaces,  instead  of  being  allowed,  like 
the  village-bred  one,  to  gallop,  cow  fashion,  without  a  rider.  But  the  impression 
which  many  buyers  of  Arab  horses  have  that  this  is,  par  excellence,  the  gallop  of 
the  race-course,^  does  not  stand  scrutiny.  For  neither  is  this  style  of  movement 
restricted  to  the  Kuhailans,  nor  does  it  necessarily  indicate  pace.  It  is  on  record 
that  Touchstone,  for  example,  "  went  with  a  perfectly  straight  knee."  In  India, 
many  Arabian  horses  of  good  racing  reputation  have  displayed  this  form  of  action. 
Such  have  seemed  to  cover  the  ground  with  but  slight  effort,  while  their  rivals 
ploughed  the  dust  behind  them.-  But  we  have  known  and  tried  several  Bedouin 
"  swimmers,"  which  put  out  their  fore-legs  like  stilts  in  galloping,  and,  for  want  of 
the  racing-like  sweep  of  the  haunches,  or  for  other  reasons,  could  not  get  away 
from  the  commonest  hack.  In  the  same  way,  very  many  Arabs  having  what  is 
called  "  round  "  action,  have  astonished  people  equally  by  their  speed  and  staying 
power.  A  celebrated  trainer  said,  that  there  were  only  two  essential  points  in  the 
race-horse — legs  to  carry  him  the  pace,  and  a  heart"  to  make  him  use  his  legs.  This, 
however,  is  one  of  the  many  good  things  which  are  true  as  parables,  without  being 
true  literally.  Balance  is  better  than  prettiness ;  and  a  horse  may  bend  his  knees, 
without  being  either  a  clambering  or  a  labouring  goer. 

So  far,  only  casual  references  have  occurred  to  in-and-in-breeding  as  a  factor  in 


^  An  Indian  who  lately  came  our  way  in  quest  of  true- 
bred  colts,  either  brought  with  him,  or  picked  up  in 
coffee-houses,  the  piece  of  innocence,  that  the  straight 
knee  action  of  the  Bedouins'  horses  depended  on  the 
desert  custom  of  shackling  the  stock  with  iron  fetters 
{kaid)  round  the  pasterns.  Accordingly,  after  making 
his  selections,  he  hobbled  them,  pastoral  fashion.  On 
riding  out  to  see  him  and  them,  we  found  each  colt 
not  only  fettered,  but  tethered  to  a  pole  with  fathoms 
of  rope,  to  keep  him  from  playing  the  fool  with  his 
fellows.  The  fresh  desert  breezes  and  the  growing 
barley  had  so  i-aised  the  animals'  spirits,  that  they 
were  plunging  round  and  round,  with  both  fore-feet 
off  the  ground, —  the  very  opposite  kind  of  action 
from  that  which  it  was  intended  to  produce  in  them. 
The  weight  and  friction  of  the  irons  had  caused  the 
formation  of  splints.  Methods  which  do  no  harm 
to  famished  Bedouin  cattle  may  prove  the  ruin  of 
corn-fed  and  idle  horses. 

^  V.  Imru  '1  Kais'  description  of  this,  in  line  5  of 
the    passage    from    his    poem   which    is    translated 


ante,  p.  143. 

^  Notwithstanding  the  late  Admiral  Rous's  "  philo- 
sophic doubts,"  we  do  believe  Eclipse  to  have  been  the 
greatest  galloper  and  stayer  that  ever  was  saddled  ; 
and  in  addition  to  being  a  big  horse  in  every  sense 
— tall  of  stature,  broad  of  frame,  and  long  in  the  right 
places — he  had  a  heart  which,  when  weighed  after 
his  death,  drew  14  lb.  [V.  A  History  of  the  British 
Turf,  by  J.  C.  Whyte  (1840),  vol.  i.  p.  250.)  Many 
good  judges  have  been  of  opinion  that  Eclipse's  un- 
beaten record,  or  rather,  the  power  which  he  exhibited 
of  passing  every  rival,  like  a  shot  out  of  a  gun,  when 
and  where  he  pleased,  depended  on  the  exceptionally 
full  development  of  the  central  organ.  Somewhat 
similarly  it  is  affirmed  in  an  old  work  on  cocking,  that 
what  was  called  a  bird's  "athletic  weight" — i.e.,  the 
weight  at  which  he  would  display  his  greatest  courage, 
strength,  and  activity,  and  at  which  it  was  considered 
impossible  to  keep  him  for  more  than  twenty  four  hours 
— was  that  under  which  the  proportion  of  the  weight 
of  the  heart  to  the  weight  of  the  body  was  greatest. 


244  T^HE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

the  several  strains  of  Al  Kham-sa.  With  every  stud-horse  in  England  standing 
near  a  line  of  railway,  it  is  not  surprising  that  all  our  thoroughbreds  are  either  closely 
or  distantly  related.  If  it  be  otherwise  in  the  case  of  the  stock  of  Najd,  its  diffusion 
from  the  Kha-bur  river  to  the  Indian  Ocean  affords  an  easy  explanation.  People 
whose  marriage  system  is  as  close  as  that  of  the  Arabs,  are  little  likely  to  make  a 
bugbear  of  interbreeding  in  the  mating  of  their  cattle.  Nevertheless,  common  use 
prescribes  a  limit.  Thus  the  Aeniza  freely  bring  together  colts  and  fillies  by  the 
same  sire,  out  of  different  mares ;  but  they  do  not  approve  of  pairing  a  colt  with 
his  own  sister,  or  a  mare  with  one  of  her  immediate  progeny.  It  may  safely  be 
assumed  that  this  restriction,  however  founded,  is  beneficial.  Several  European 
authorities  are  of  opinion  that  it  is  not  the  inbreeding  jz^er  .y^  which  is  injurious,  but 
its  tendency,  when  not  guarded  by  rigid  selection,  to  fix  and  perpetuate  consti- 
tutional taints  and  other  bad  points.^  Considering  how  rare  perfect  soundness  is, 
this  distinction  does  not  seem  a  very  practical  one.  At  any  rate,  not  all  the  wise 
men  of  Babylon,  and  far  less  the  Arabian  Bedouin,  are  qualified  to  breed  horses  on 
the  in-and-in  principle,  without  the  evil  results  preponderating. 

1  The  Marriage  of  Near  Kin,  by  Mr  A.  H.  Huth. 


245 


CHAPTER   II. 


THE    TYPICAL    ARABIAN. 


AT  this  late  stage  it  is  superfluous  to  repeat  that  the  typical  Arabian  is 
the  horse  of  the  Bedouin  nations  of  Najd.  Necessarily  the  blood-horse,  or 
horse  of  speed,  approaches  everywhere  more  or  less  to  one  and  the  same  type  ;  but 
the  best  judges  will  be  the  most  guarded  in  drawing  an  ideal  pattern,  and  then 
declaring  that  every  genuine  specimen  must  resemble  it.  The  variability  of  animal 
forms,  even  in  the  natural  state,  is  now,  thanks  to  Darwin,  well  apprehended.  The 
popular  generalisation  that  "  like  begets  like"  is  accepted  with  due  reference  to  the 
fact  behind  it,  that  if  the  offspring  were  in  all  cases  exact  copies  of  their  parents, 
new  breeds  would  be  impossible.  And,  of  course,  in  artificial  varieties  the  causes  of 
divergence  are  even  more  numerous  and  influential. 

There  are  two  points  as  to  which  we  wish  to  be  on  clear  ground,  before  pro- 
ceeding to  search  for  a  "  type  "  of  the  thoroughbred  Najdi  horse.  These  are,  the 
use  of  our  term  "thoroughbred"  in  connection  with  the  Arabian  blood-horse,  and 
the  standard  by  which,  in  Arab  horses,  "  thorough-breeding  "  is  to  be  determined. 


I.   In  what  sense  is  the  Arabian  variety  Thoroughbred  ? 

It  has  been  seen  that  the  Arab's  word  for  "thorough-breeding"  is  a-sd-lat,  or 
the  state  of  being  firmly  foimded}  The  a-szl  stock  of  the  desert,  though  now  rising, 
like  certain  classes  of  plants,  on  innumerable  stems,  instead  of  on  a  central  one,  is 
theoretically  of  one  breed,  which,  according  to  the  Arabs,  is  perfected  and  estab- 
lished. It  seems  a  waste  of  time  to  notice  again  the  hazy  ideas  on  this  subject 
which  several  of  our  countrymen  have  committed  to  writing.^     In  a  pedigree  table 

'   V.  ante,  p.  94.  |  "  V.  ante,  pp.  7  et  seq.,  et  220. 


246 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK   IV. 


of  the  Arabian  thoroughbred  stock  in  Bedouin  Tribes  of  the  Euphrates,  Mr  Blunt 
brings  in  the  Newmarket  breed  in  two  places — once  as  a  derivation,  in  the  male  line 
only,  from  the  Darley,  and  again  as  a  side-get  of  the  Godolphin's.^  In  the  same 
book  the  English  race-horse  is  figuratively  styled  the  "  bastard  cousin "  of  the 
Arabian.^  This  is  pretty  well ;  but  it  is  eclipsed  by  Major  Upton's  great  dis 
covery,  that  when  the  waters  of  the  Flood  subsided,  a  pair  of  horses  not  unlike 
the  Darley  Arabian  descended  the  sides  of  Ararat.^ 

It  is  a  relief  to  turn  from  such  glaring  absurdities  to  the  technical  term 
"Thoroughbred"  of  our  Stud-book.  Among  us  the  meaning  of  this  word  is 
perfectly  definite.  Its  range  of  application  is  wide.  Not  only  the  blood-horse,^ 
and  other  equine  breeds,  but  highly  bred  animals  of  every  kind,  may  be  denoted 
by  it.  This  fact,  however,  gives  rise  to  no  confusion  of  ideas.  In  every  case 
alike,  the  essential  condition  of  "  thorough-breeding "  is,  that  the  pedigree  shall 
be  traceable,  without  break  or  flaw,  to  certain  approved  and  recorded  progenitors. 
The  modern  British  race-horse  is  the  product  of  about  two  hundred  years  of 
exclusive  breeding.  If  any  one  consider  that  period  all  too  short  for  the  develop- 
ment of  a  thoroughly  established,  or  in  Arab  parlance  a-sil,  breed  of  horses,  the 
field  of  discussion  is  open  to  him.  Here  it  may  be  said,  and  truly,  that  although 
it  was  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  that  our  countrymen  made  their 
greatest  start  in  horse-breeding,  it  was  not  till  about  a  hundred  years  later  that 
they  began  systematically  to  record  the  pedigrees  of  the  horses  and  mares  from 
which  they  bred.  When  this  fact  is  examined,  it  is  found  strongly  to  bear  on 
the  point  which  is  now  being  made  for.  The  English  Stud-book  was  first 
regularly  started  in  1 808  ;  and  in  the  preface  it  was  stated  that,  "  with  a  view  to 
correct  the  then  increasing  evil  of  false  and  inaccurate  pedigrees,  the  author  was 
in  the  year  1791  prevailed  upon  to  publish  an  Introduction  to  a  general  Stud-book, 
consisting  of  a  small  collection  of  pedigrees,  which  he  had  extracted  from  racing 
calendars  and  sale  papers."  That  means,  that  the  compiler  had  to  go  back  for 
about  a  century,  and  glean  and  piece  together  such  items  of  information  as  existed. 
Mark  the  result.  He  was  near  enough  the  starting-point  to  discover  with  tolerable 
certainty  the  names  and  histories  of  most  of  the  early  fathers  of  the  line.  The 
dates  which  occupied  him  seldom  went  further  back  than  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  he  was  free  from  the  necessity  of  romancing.  In  1791,  many  must  have 
been  alive  who  remembered  Lord  Godolphin's  so-called  Arabian.     Only  about  one 


1  op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  ii,  vol.  i.  p.  276. 

2  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.  p.  247. 

3  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  vi. 

*  The  term  "  blood-horse  "  may  be  merely  a  vestige 
of  the  primitive  notion,  that  there  is  an  essential  dif- 


ference between  the  red  corpuscles  of  the  "  quality " 
and  the  commonalty  respectively.  But  the  name  also 
points  to  that  beautiful  swelling  out  of  the  veins  after 
a  gallop,  in  the  racer  and  his  descendants,  by  means 
of  which  the  heart  and  lungs  obtain  relief 


CHAP.   II. 


THE    TYPICAL  ARABIAN. 


247 


hundred  and  twenty  years  had  passed  shice  the  second  Charles's  Master  of  the 
Horse,  who  was  sent  to  purchase  Eastern  stock,  brought  over  the  "  royal  mares," 
upon  which,  and  upon  the  many  proved  mares  already  in  the  island,  were  grafted 
the  imported  Anatolian,  Barb,  and  Arab  elements  of  the  English  breed.  Never- 
theless, the  comparative  shortness  of  the  misty  period  did  not  prevent  errors. 
Many  doubtful  animals  were  entered  in  the  Stud-book.  Many  others  which  ought 
to  have  been  registered  were  omitted.  There  are  even  grounds  for  thinking  that 
several  of  the  pedigrees  which  have  come  down  to  us  are  inaccurate.^ 

A  confirmation  of  the  position  now  reached  will  be  found  in  connection  with 
the  next  question  also  : 


II.  On  what  Evidence  does  the  point  of  "Thorough-breeding"  depend 

IN  the  Arabian  variety  ? 

The  tree  of  a-sA-lat  is  known  by  its  fruits.  The  Bedouin  Arabs  hold  that  a 
mare  which  is  not  a-sil  cannot  take  care  of  her  rider  in  Al  ghaz-u.  It  may  be 
assumed  that  they  are  right  in  this  belief.  If  they  had  not  discovered  that  purity 
of  blood  was  an  essential  qualification,  they  would  not  have  been  so  careful  to  pro- 
duce it  and  maintain  it.  But  obviously  we  have  here  a  test  which  lies  outside  of  the 
European's  world.  Nobody  but  a  Bad-a-wi  appreciates  the  ideal  with  which  it  is 
connected,  or  possesses  the  means  of  proving  that  ideal. 

Another  form  of  evidence  by  means  of  which  a-sd-lat  may  be  certified  is  the 
general  testimony  of  the  Bedouin.  Particular  stress  must  here  be  laid,  however,  on 
the  condition  that  all  such  witnesses  shall  be  of  the  Bad-u,  and  that  they  shall  be 
actually  before  one.  The  difficulties  which  confront  foreigners  when  they  would 
thus  personally  and  directly  appeal  to  desert  folk  will  be  further  considered  in 
the  sequel.  The  European  who  is  an  honest  gentleman  runs  some  risk  of  being 
befooled  when  he  attempts  to  do  so  ;  while  the  European  of  the  jam-baz  school 
is  more  interested  in  making  money  than  in  observing  facts.  This,  however, 
is  not  the  point  which  is  at  present  under  consideration.  It  has  elsewhere  been 
stated  that  the  Bedouin,  when  approached  in  their  own  deserts,  declare  truly  all 
that  they  know  about  a  horse's  pedigree.  The  question  is.  What  intrinsic  value 
are  we  to  attribute  to  what  they  tell  us  on  this  subject  ?  Here  it  is  necessary  to 
recall  what  has   elsewhere  appeared  regarding  the  illiterate  state  of  the  Arabs.^ 


^  In  the  Stud-book,  Eclipse  (1764-89)  is  credited  to 
Marske.  But  see  in  The  Horse  (1829),  by  quaint 
John  Lawrence,  who  remembered  the  morning  that 


he  was  foaled,  a  different  story. 
-   V.  ante,  p.  132. 


248 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK   IV. 


Among  them  knowledge  is  not  an  affair  of  writing.     Several  of  our  countrymen 
have  persuaded    themselves   that,   where    the   Arabs   are  concerned,   Stud   records 
are   unnecessary.      We  would  go  as  far  as  any  one  in  allowing  for  the  fact  that 
the    conditions    of  life    are    different    in    Eastern    and    Western    countries    respec- 
tively.     But  miracles  do  not  happen  in  Arabia,  any  more  than   in   Europe  ;    and 
it    is    everywhere    incumbent    to    keep    within    the    bounds    of    probability.        If 
any  one    imagine  that   strains   of  horses  can  be   strictly  and   perfectly  preserved, 
apart   from    the    registration    of   matings    and    foalings,    let    him    refer    the    ques- 
tion   to    the    great    English,    Continental,    and    Australian    Stud    masters.       If   it 
were    an    affair    of  memory,   who  would   not  rather  trust  to   that  of  an  educated 
Englishman    than    to   that  of  desert  herdsmen,   who  cannot   even  say  how  many 
camel-riders  are   in    a   troop    in    front    of  them,    without    multiplying  the  number 
by   about   ten  ?      It    is    an    evident    fact    that    the   Bedouin    Arabs,   aided   by  the 
isolation  of  their  deserts,  by  their  well-developed   power  of  orally  handing  down 
pedigrees,   and   by  other   circumstances,    have    to    a    surprising    degree    succeeded 
in    preserving    the    approved    character    of    their    Ku  -  hai  -  lans.        But    in    our 
opinion    the    floating    accounts    of   the    purity   of  even    their    best    strains    require 
to  be  received  with  some   allowance.      It  may  be  conceded,   though   actual   proof 
is    wanting,    that    tribes    or    families    have    at    different   times    preserved    a  mare's 
lineage  for  perhaps   even  a  few  hundred  years, — a  pretty  liberal  allowance,  con- 
sidering   all    the    circumstances.       But    this   is    a    different    matter    from    assigning 
to  an  ancient   and  widely   distributed  breed,   in   which  the  main  guardian   of  the 
pedigrees     is     oral    transmission,     as    high    a    degree    of    thorough  -  breeding    as 
that  possessed   by  our  own   stock   of  this   St   Simon   and   Ormonde   period.     We 
almost  hesitate  to  mention  performances  on   the  turf  as   a  guarantee  of  blood  in 
Arab   horses,   seeing   that  the  Bedouin  do  not  resort  to  trials  of  this   kind.     As, 
however,  all  the  jam-bazes  lay  stress   on  this   view,^   it  seems   to   call  for  notice. 
Unquestionably,    a    high    degree    of    blood    is    demanded    to    make    a    horse    in 
any  proper   sense   a  racer.       Nobody   now  thinks    of  entering    a    "  cocktail,"    any 
more    than    an    Arab,    for    a    good    race    in    England.       Al   ghaz-u    calls    for    a 
fine  turn  of  speed,  and  for  other  qualities  which  can  only  be  developed   through 
special   breeding ;    but   it   does   not   do  so  up  to  the  point  which  racing  does.     A 
less  perfected  type  suffices  for  pursuit  and  flight,  and  for  galloping  from  morning 


1  Thus  the  late  Esau  bin  Curtas  {cijite,  p.  228),  in 
the  07-ie7iial  Sporting  Magazme  (Calcutta)  for  March 
1870,  p.  968,  writes  as  follows  : — 

"  Gentlemen,  before  purchasing,  ought  to  make 
searching  inquiry  regarding  the  blood.  This  import- 
ant   precaution    should    never   be    neglected.      It  is 


quite  a  different  thing  when  a  horse  has  won  races; 
.  .  .  the  fact  of  winning  races  is  proof  positive  of 
blood."  The  italics  are  ours.  Considering  what 
Arab  racing  is  in  India,  there  never  was  a  rasher 
statement. 


CHAP.  II.  THE    TYPICAL   ARABIAN.  249 

to  night  at  a  moderate  pace,  than  for  crucial  tests  lilve  those  of  the  Beacon  course. 
Many — perhaps  the  majority — of  the  famous  Arabs  of  Indian  turf  annals  have 
borne  the  stamp  of  thorough-breeding.  But  many  other  great  winners  of  the 
same  series,  judged  by  their  appearance,  must  have  belonged  to  the  secondary 
division  from  which  the  Bedouin  Arab  will  not  breed  ;  nay,  if  one  of  which  should 
by  accident  approach  a  Ktt,-hai-la,  the  indignant  owner  will  bare  the  arm,  and  by 
the  rudest  conceivable  piece  of  surgery  remove  the  newly  vivified  ovum.  A 
letter,  written  in  1887,  is  before  us,  from  her  Majesty's  late  Consul  at  Aleppo, 
Mr  Henderson,  who  states  that  at  first  he  was  an  enthusiast  for  Arab  horses 
and  mares,  and  bought  some  very  good  ones.  After  mentioning  that  A-sil, 
the  winner  of  Mr  Blunt's  races  at  Newmarket  and  Sandown,  was  of  his  breed- 
ing, Mr  Henderson  gives  it  as  the  result  of  his  experience  that  "half-bred  horses 
are  much  more  reliable  and  useful "  than  those  which  the  Bedouin  account  to  Al 
Kham-sa.  He  further  says  that  for  his  part  he  had  long  ago  stopped  buying 
"pure-bred  ones."  Non  nostrttm  est  tantas  componere  Hies.  On  the  one  hand, 
who  can  surrender  his  innate  faith  in  blood?  On  the  other,  it  is  contrary  to  the 
observed  facts  to  imagine  that  turf  performance  is  a  full  or  conclusive  test  of 
pure  breeding  in  Arab  horses. 

Another  form  of  evidence  on  the  point  before  us  remains  to  be  mentioned, 
and  that  is  the  indications  which  are  evident  to  the  eyesight.  The  Arab  of  the 
desert  does  not  trust  to  these  external  features,  any  more  than  we  do  in  the  case 
of  our  own  blood-horses.  That  which  is  called  in  England  a  "  half-bred "  may 
have  nineteen-twentieths  of  Stud-book  blood.  In  good  looks,  and  in  every  point  of 
physique,  he  may  resemble  a  true  -  bred  son  of  Saunterer  or  Sweetmeat.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  have  been  dams  of  St  Leger  winners  whose  appearance 
was  far  from  thoroughbred,  especially  when  wearing  their  winter  coat.  Apart 
from  Ruff,  and  the  inflexible  standard  of  the  winning-post,  we  possess  no  means 
of  separating  our  pure  blood-horses  from  those  of  less  than  sixteen  quarterings. 
The  Arabs  are  in  the  same  position,  except  that,  instead  of  a  connected  family 
history,  or  Stud-book,  the  chief  evidence  which  they  have  to  guide  them  is  oral 
tradition.  Foreigners  may  think  that  there  is  as  manifest  a  difference  between  a 
ka-duh  and  a  Ku-hai-idn  as  between  a  "  twinkling  star  and  a  celestial  sun  "  ;  but  the 
Ba-da-wt  does  not  attempt  to  discriminate  between  them  by  the  eye  alone.  When  a 
horse  which  he  has  never  before  seen  is  shown  to  him,  he  asks  about  his  dam  and 
sire.  If  satisfied  on  both  points,  he  looks  him  over;  but  he  neither  assumes  the 
pedigree  from  the  appearance,  nor  attaches  importance  to  the  latter  apart  from  the 
former.  When  in  foray  or  otherwise  he  obtains  possession  of  a  mare  which  is  only 
"the  daughter  of"  an  a-sfl  one — i.e.,  "half-bred" — he  does  not  continue  her  line. 
Living  and  moving  in  his  own  narrow  world,  he  contemptuously  affixes  the  label 

2  I 


250 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK   IV. 


of  ku-d2ish^  to  all  horse -stock  of  which  he  does  not  know  the  parentage.  This 
exclusiveness  is  entirely  bound  up  with  his  system  of  horse-breeding.  In  India 
and  other  countries  we  occasionally  see  a  flaring  ka-dish  from  I'rak  or  Syria,  which 
some  one  has  fitted  with  an  Ananias  pedigree,  employed  to  regenerate  fallen-away 
breeds,  with  the  usual  result  that  the  produce  turns  out  worse  than  himself  The 
Bedouin  nations  are  safe  at  least  from  this  dansfer. 

In  the  preceding  remarks  we  claim  to  have  reduced  to  order  these  two  sub- 
jects— viz.,  the  sense  in  which  the  Arabian,  as  compared  with  the  English,  blood- 
horse  is  "thoroughbred";  and  the  point  up  to  which  memory  and  oral  recital  are 
safely  to  be  trusted  as  respectively  the  depositary  and  the  transmitting  medium  of 
horses'  pedigrees. 

An  important  practical  question  next  invites  us.  Among  all  the  strains  of 
blood-horses  which  the  Arabian  deserts  nurture,  is  there  no  pre-eminent  strain  ?  Can 
we,  or  can  we  not,  discover  one  "  precious  porcelain  "  of  equine  clay,  every  piece  of 
which,  while  readily  distinguishable  from  counterfeits,  closely  resembles  the  other  ? 

"  Facies  non  omnibus  una. 
Nee  diversa  tamen  ;  qualem  decet  sororum."  ^ 

Palgrave  has  led  people  to  suppose  that  there  is  such  a  breed.  His  book  of 
travels  contains  a  description  of  about  three  hundred  "  most  consummate  "  specimens 
of  it,  which  he  says  he  saw  in  A-mir  Fai-sal's  stables  at  Ar  Ri-adh  in  1861.  The 
passage  referred  to  has  been  quoted  by  numerous  writers,  but  it  is  necessary  again 
to  cite  it.     The  words  are  : — 

"  Never  had  I  seen  or  imagined  so  lovely  a  collection.  Their  stature  was  indeed  some- 
what low  ;  I  do  not  think  that  any  came  fully  up  to  fifteen  hands — fourteen  appeared  to  me 
about  their  average ;  but  they  were  so  exquisitely  well  shaped  that  want  of  greater  size 
seemed  hardly,  if  at  all,  a  defect.  Remarkably  full  in  the  haunches,  with  the  shoulder  of  a 
slope  so  elegant  as  to  make  one,  in  the  words  of  an  Arab  poet,  '  go  raving  mad  about  it ' ;  a 
little,  a  very  little  saddle-backed,  just  the  curve  which  indicates  springiness  without  any  weak- 
ness ;  a  head  broad  above,  and  tapering  down  to  a  nose  fine  enough  to  verify  the  phrase  of 
'  drinking  from  a  pint-pot,'  did  pint-pots  exist  in  Nejed  ;  a  most  intelligent  and  yet  a  singularly 
gentle  look,  full  eye,  sharp,  thorn-like,  little  ear ;  legs,  fore  and  hind,  that  seemed  as  if  made  of 


1  PI.  of  ka-dish,  g.v.,  p.  47,  ajiie,  et  f.n.  3.  This 
word  is  so  current  among  the  Arabs  that  Niebuhr, 
and  after  him  other  writers,  make  "  Kochlani "  {^Ku- 
hai-lan)  and  "  Kadeschi "  {ka-disli)  their  two  leading 
subdivisions  of  the  Arabian  breed.  If  we  understand 
by  the  two  terms  no  more  than  a-sU  and  less  than  a- 
sil,  respectively;  we  shall  have  a  useful  enough  rough 


classification.  But  "  Kadeschi "  must  not  be  mistaken 
for  a  strain  name.  The  ka-dish  merely  is  the  pariah 
of  horse-flesh. 

2  Not  all  featured  alike  ; 
And  yet  not  different — such  likeness  as  sisters  ought 
to  have. 

— Ovid  :  Metam.,  Lib.  ii. 


CHAP.  II.  THE    TYPICAL  ARABIAN.  251 

hammered  iron,  so  clean  and  yet  so  well  twisted  with  sinew  ;  a  neat  round  hoof,  just  the 
requisite  for  hard  ground,  the  tail  set  on,  or  rather  thrown  out,  at  a  perfect  arch  ;  coats  smooth, 
shining,  and  light ;  the  mane  long,  but  not  overgrown  nor  heavy  ;  and  an  air  and  step  that 
seemed  to  say,  'Look  at  me;  am  I  not  pretty?'  their  appearance  justified  all  reputation,  all 
value,  all  poetry.  The  prevailing  colour  was  chestnut  or  grey  ;  a  light  bay,  an  iron  colour, 
white,  or  black,  were  less  common  ;  full  bay,  flea-bitten,  or  piebald,  none.  But  if  asked  what 
are,  after  all,  the  specially  distinctive  points  of  the  Najdee  horse,  I  should  reply,  the  slope  of 
the  shoulder,  the  extreme  cleanness  of  the  shank,  and  the  full,  rounded  haunch,  though  every 
other  part,  too,  has  a  perfection  and  a  harmony  unwitnessed  (at  least  by  my  eyes)  anywhere 
else."  1 

A  poet  of  the  modern  school  says,  or  sings  : — 

"  When  Nebuchadnezzar  went  out  to  grass. 
With  the  horned  cattle  and  the  patient  ass, 
He  said,  as  he  tasted  the  unwonted  food, 
This  may  be  wholesome,  but  it  is  not  good." 

And    in   the    same   manner  Palgrave's    delineation  may    be    pretty,    but    it    is    not 
true.      It  is  the  work  of  a  penman,  not  of  a  horseman.     Who  ever  saw  a  "perfect 
arch,"  whether  circular  or  pointed,  formed  by  a  horse's  tail  ?     It  is  the  case  that  a 
flag-like  carriage  of  this  part  is  characteristic  of  the  Arabian  blood-horse.     That  is, 
it  helps  to  distinguish  him  from  horses  of  other  classes.     The  Bedouin,  when  a  foal 
is  dropped,  raise  and  press  back  its  tail  with  the  hand  or  with  a  stick ;  and  they  say 
that  the  stylish  manner  in  which  their  horses  carry  the  tail  out  from  the  quarters  is 
owing  to  the  set  thus  given  to  it.     Another  equally  innocent  desert  operation  will  be 
noticed  afterwards,  but  we  are  not  yet  done  with  Palgrave.      It  is  a  matter  of  fact 
in  England,  where  the  astutest  of  mankind,  from  Prime   Ministers  down  to  betting- 
list  keepers,  are  always  trying  to  breed  up  to  models,  that  even  half-a-dozen  level- 
bred  animals  are  seldom,  if  ever,  shown  in  any  one  class.     And  we  would  like  to 
know  how  a  stud  of  three  hundred,  all  with  the  same  curve  of  "  saddle-back,"  and, 
except   in   height  and   colour,   as  like  one  another  as   so  many  Geneva  watches, 
can  have  been  collected  in  Arabia.      If  they  were  obtained  by  breeding,  an  incred- 
ible   number,  of  which    they  formed  the   pick,  must  have   been   produced   in   the 
Amir's  own  pastures.      If  purchasing  agents  brought  them  in  from  every  quarter, 
the  men  who  served  Amir  Fai-sal  must  have  been  of  no  common  kind.      Under  any 
circumstances,  Palgrave's  account  relates  to  a  period  to  which  it  is  needless  to  go 
back.     The  collapse  of  the  Wahabite  Empire  has  been  incidentally  noticed.      Its 
capital,    Ar  Ri-adh,   is  a  ba-lad  mat,    or  died- out  place ;   and  its  secular  state  is 
transferred  to  Amir  Muhammad's  city,  Ha-yil.     Comparatively  few  travellers  now 
spread  their  carpets,  and  hang  their  belts  and  arms,  in  the  guest-hall  of  the  Ibnu 
's  Su-ti'd  family.     The  mangers  in  the  palace-yards  are  choked  with  weeds.     The 


'  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  7,  vol.  ii.  pp.  93,  94. 


252 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK   IV. 


imperial  mares  of  Palgrave's  story  are  as  much  things  of  the  past  as  is  the  collection 
whfch  the  Messrs  Tattersall  dispersed  at  the  sale  at  Hampton  Court  on  the  death 
of  King  William  IV.i 

In  this  book  no  attempt  will  be  made  to  draw  up  a  regular  description  of  the 
typical  Arabian.  The  aim  is,  less  to  define  an  ideal  than  to  exhibit  approved 
animals  that  have  existed  ;  and  pictorial  representation  is  indispensable  for  that  pur- 
pose. The  seven  horses  which  form  the  subjects  of  our  seven  full-size  illustrations 
have  this  in  common,  that  they  were  brought  from  the  Arabian  ports  to  India 
through  the  ordinary  trade  channels.  At  first  the  only  real  vouchers  for  them  were 
their  good  looks.  To  this  day  their  "  records  "  are  simply  the  proofs  which  they 
afforded  on  Indian  race-courses  of  speed  and  stoutness,  heart  and  honesty.  On  the 
point  of  long  ancestry,  every  reader  must  draw  his  own  conclusions,  in  regard  to 
each  of  them,  from  the  presumptive  evidence  which  their  several  figures  supply. 
To  us  they  do  not  all  appear  to  touch  the  same  high  level  in  respect  of  pedigree. 
Nevertheless,  the  reader  may,  if  he  will,  accept  all  the  seven  as  "typical  ";  and  the 
three  whose  portraits  appear  in  the  present  chapter  are  designed  respectively  to 
serve  for  examples  of  the  medium-sized  Arabian,  the  large  Arabian,  and  the  dwarf 
Arabian.  We  shall  presently  come  back  to  these  three  models,  with  the  object  of 
further  illustrating  through  them  the  breed  which  they  adorned.  But  in  view  of  the 
fact  just  stated,  that  the  history,  in  Arabia,  of  the  series  represented  by  them  is,  at 
the  most,  a  matter  of  hearsay,  let  us  first  exhibit  another  group  belonging  to  a  dif- 
ferent category.  None  of  the  horses  which  are  figured  in  the  opposite  picture  ever 
heard  the  saddling-bell.  Not  the  jam-b^zes,  but  persons  as  distinguished  as  an 
I-mam  of  Muscat,  and  others,  selected  them  as  worthy  representatives  of  the  race 
of  Ku-hai-lan.  They  have  every  appearance  of  being  of  one  breed,  if  not  precisely 
of  one  type.  In  the  line  of  Eclipse  the  several  leading  strains  or  admixtures  are 
not  less  remarkable  for  their  differences  than  for  their  general  inter-resemblances, 
and  any  one  can  distinguish,  for  example,  a  Blacklock  from  a  Venison.  Of  course, 
the  same  thing  is  to  be  looked  for  in  Al  Kham-sa.  The  group  which  is  placed 
opposite  brings  together  some  of  the  very  cream  of  the  stock  of  Najd.  We  consider 
Nos.  I  and  6  pre-eminently  typical.  Sultan  Su-u  d,  for  fifty-two  years  the  I-mam  of 
Muscat,  and  master  of  all  the 

"  banks  of  pear],  and  palmy  isles  "  ^ 


^  At  the  sale  alluded  to  the  two  Arabian  mares 
from  Muscat  fetched  but  fifty  guineas  and  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  guineas  respectively,  though  stinted  to 
The  Colonel,  winner  of  the  Doncaster  St  Leger,  for 
which  his  Majesty  George  IV.  had  given  four  thou- 
sand guineas.  The  two  stallions  from  the  same  quar- 
ter, the  Black  Arabian  and  the  Bay  Arabian,  figured 


more  creditably  in  the  sale-ring.  The  former,  the 
very  much  admired  Sultan,  was  taken,  for  five  hun- 
dred and  eighty  guineas,  by  an  agent  of  the  King  of 
Wiirtemberg ;  and  the  latter  for  four  hundred  and  ten 
guineas. 

2  Moore,  in  Lalla  Rookh. 


(3)  "Den'hh: 


^^    f 


CHAP.  ri. 


THE    TYPICAL   ARABIAN. 


253 


of  Oman,  would  not  have  sent  to  a  king  of  England  anything  short  of  the  best. 
He  whose  eye  retains  the  images  of  the  "grey  mare"  and  "black  Arabian"  will 
never  want  for  authentic  models  of  the  Ku-hai-lan.  Youatt  chose  the  head  and  madh- 
bah  ^  of  the  latter  for  the  frontispiece  of  his  well-known  book.  He  describes  the  head 
as  "  inimitable  in  the  broadness  and  squareness  of  the  forehead  ;  the  smallness  of 
the  ears  ;  ^  the  prominence  and  brilliancy  of  the  eye ;  the  shortness  and  fineness  of 
the  muzzle ;  the  width  of  the  nostril  ;  the  thinness  of  the  lower  jaw ;  and  the 
beautifully  developed  course  of  the  veins."  ^  He  might  also  have  called  attention  to 
another  feature  of  the  breed  which  the  same  head  exhibits, — namely,  the  fossa- 
like depression,*  as  in  the  antelopes,  across  the  face,  between  the  forehead  and  the 
muzzle.  No.  2  in  the  group,  a  Havi-dd-ni-ya  Sim-ri,  is  also  characteristic.  No.  3 
is  the  Najdian  skirmisher.  Dervish,  whose  history  was  given  at  p.  165,  ante.  Not 
much  is  -known  of  Nos.  4  and  5.  The  originals  of  both  appear  in  Lt.-Col.  Ham. 
Smith's  standard  work  on  the  Nahi,ral  History  of  the  Horse.  The  one  forms  a 
representation  of  an  Eastern  charger  much  associated  with  the  fame  of  the  first 
Napoleon. 5  The  other  illustrates  a  breed  "^  "  shaped  like  greyhounds,  and  destitute 
of  flesh,  but  of  high  spirit  and  prodigious  endurance,"  which  is  preserved  by  the 
Arabs  on  the  sandy  plains  south  of  Atlas,  in  the  north-west  part  of  Africa.  The 
remaining  figure  in  the  group  is  copied  from  Stonehenge's  book  on  the  Horse. 
The  original  of  it  was  Sha'-ban,  the  property  of  H.M.  the  King  of  Wiirtemberg. 


'  Lit.,  place  to  luliich  the  knife  is  put.  In  all  per- 
fect Arabians  the  windpipe  runs  exquisitely  into  the 
throat. 

2  V.post,^.  255. 

3  The  Horse,  by  W.  Youatt  (1855),  p.  22. 
*  Called  by  the  Arabs  af-iias,  for  af-tas. 

'"  Lt.-Col.  Ham.  Smith  omits  to  give  any  explanation 
of  the  illustration  which  is  entitled  by  him  "  Marengo, 
Bonaparte's  Arab."  His  work  was  published  in  1S43. 
Perhaps  it  may  be  assumed  that  his  engraving  of 
Marengo  follows  one  of  the  portraits  made  by  vari- 
ous artists  of  a  horse  which,  after  Napoleon's  last 
battle,  came  into  the  possession  of  Lord  Petre,  and 
subsequently  of  the  late  General  Angerstein.  The 
General  believed  the  horse  to  be  "  JMarengo,  barb- 
charger  of  Napoleon,  ridden  by  him  at  Marengo, 
Austerhtz,  Jena,  Wagram,  in  the  campaign  of  Russia, 
and  finally  at  Waterloo."  Many  have  doubted  General 
Angerstein's  favourite,  which  he  kept  and  bred  from 
near  Ely,  ever  having  been  at  Waterloo  at  all.  And 
naturally  such  sceptics  are  even  more  incredulous  of 
the  story  that  one  and  the  same  horse  carried  Bona- 
parte in  the  Marengo  campaign  (1800),  and,  fifteen 
years  later,  in  the  final  act  of  his  marvellous  military 


career.  It  is  pretty  certain  that  Napoleon  brought 
over  from  Egypt,  in  1799,  after  the  battle  of  Abu-Kir, 
a  light-grey  barb,  which  he  rode  at  Marengo.  Either 
this  animal,  or  another  of  the  same  colour  called  A'li, 
taken  at  the  battle  of  the  Pyramids,  in  Egypt,  in 
179S,  may  have  been  the  "small  horse"  which  De- 
laberre  Blaine,  \\'hose  working  period  was  in  the  first 
half  of  our  century,  delineated  in  his  Rural  Sports 
(p.  245),  with  the  explanation  that  he  saw  it  in  the 
Jardi7i  des  Plantes,  where,  owing  to  Bonaparte  being 
"  so  fond  of  it,"  they  usually  kept  it.  In  twenty  years, 
nineteen  chargers  were  killed  under  Napoleon  in  sixty 
general  engagements  ;  and  the  chronicler  is  unborn 
who  can  unfold  the  histories  and  services  of  his 
Marengo,  Marie,  Austerlitz,  A'li,  and  Jaffa,  all  of 
which  were  either  grey  or  white  in  colour.  All  that 
can  be  certainly  said  on  this  point  is,  that  a  white 
Arab  became  part  of  the  Napoleonic  legend.  When, 
during  the  Second  Empire,  Meisonnier  bi'oke  upon 
the  artistic  world  with  a  series  of  pictures  illustrative 
of  Bonaparte's  campaigns,  he  necessarily  set  the  hero 
on  an  Eastern  charger  of  this  royal  colour. 

"  Locally  designated  Shu-ra-ba-tu  'r  rth,  or  D)-inker 
of  the  wind. 


254  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

A  horse  of  Sha'-ban's  appearance  is,  in  his  way,  as  great  a  triumph  of  breeding  as 
are  our  own  successful  racers,  champion  shorthorns,  and  Waterloo  Cup  winners. 

And  now  to  speak  of  the  three  full-page  illustrations  of  this  chapter. 

The  desert  Arab's  natural  perception  of  the  essential  points  of  a  blood-horse  has 
already  been  noticed.  For  horse-talk,  and  betting  on  horses,  our  island  is  beyond 
the  reach  of  competition  ;  and  there  is  no  horseman  like  the  Englishman  when  he  is 
a  horseman.  But  in  the  martial  clans  of  Arabia  a  knowledge  of  horses,  be  it  great 
or  small,  is  truly  national.  That  is,  it  forms  the  common  possession  of  every  man, 
woman,  and  stripling.  Not  merely  a  class,  or  a  profession,  but  thousands  of  deeply 
interested  breeders,  generation  after  generation,  are  to  be  credited  with  the  pro- 
duction of  a  stamp  of  horse  like  Greyleg.  The  author's  memory  unfortunately 
carries  him  back  to  Greyleg's  time,  and  he  can  vouch  for  the  truth  of  the  likeness 
of  him  which  is  here  given.  The  original  of  it  is  a  water-colour  portrait,  from  the 
life,  which  we  bought  of  W.  Brewty,  the  rider  of  him  in  all  but  seven  of  his  eighty 
races.  The  horse  was  brought  to  India,  from  Ku-wait  or  Bussorah,  in  a  dealer's 
string.  Judging  from  the  very  moderate  price  which  sufficed  to  buy  him  at  Mysore, 
his  importer  must  have  had  him  on  easy  terms  from  the  Arabs.  We  saw  him,  at 
Bombay  in  1864,  walk  to  the  starting-post  for  the  Forbes  Stakes  in  company  with 
a  T.  B.  E.  mare,  a  daughter  of  Harkaway,  to  whom,  in  the  race  which  followed,  he 
gave  a  complete  go-by  ;  and  he  never  so  much  as  saluted  her.  Twenty-five  years 
later,  we  were  informed  by  Brewty  that  the  horse  was  put  to  stud  in  his  green  old 
age,  and  grew  very  troublesome  and  unmanageable.  Perhaps  it  may  be  inferred 
from  this,  and  from  the  smallness  of  his  original  price,  that  his  Arab  breeders,  owing 
to  some  objection  to  his  pedigree,  refused  him  the  opportunity  of  transmitting  his 
form  and  qualities.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  may  have  been  a  stolen  treasure  ; 
or  his  people  may  have  sold  him  because  of  his  strain  being  fully  represented 
among  them.  It  is  best  to  keep  clear  of  comparisons,  and  not  claim  for  any  horse 
superiority  to  all  his  kind.  Like  many  a  good  horse  in  England,  from  Gimcrack 
down  to  Little  Wonder,  Greyleg  was  of  comparatively  small  size,  and  did  not  exceed 
fourteen  hands  and  one  inch  at  the  withers.  Perhaps  there  have  been  faster  ones, 
though,  for  an  Arab,  he  possessed  a  rare  turn  of  speed.  In  a  race  he  was  lazy,  and 
needed  to  be  wakened  up  in  the  middle  of  it.  Several  of  the  few  defeats  which  he 
suffered  were  caused  by  his  being  over-indulged  in  the  first  part  of  the  journey,  so 
that  some  rival,  which  he  could  easily  have  beaten,  instead  of  receiving  his  quietus 
early  in  the  race,  was  left  to  come  with  a  rush,  and  catch  him  on  the  winning-post. 
In  every  point  of  outward  form,  Greyleg  was  typically  Arabian.  No  one  who  has  seen 
him  is  likely  to  live  long  enough  to  see  another  equal  to  him.  It  is  not,  however, 
as  a  "high-mettled  racer"  that  he  is  here  depicted.  If  he  had  been  the  slowest 
of  the  slow,  he  would  equally  have  been  chosen  to  represent  his  family  in  these 


30 

to 


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S.    "SP 


0 
HI 

J 


,1 


to 

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1^       M        J 

o  I  f 


CHAP.  II.  ■  THE    TYPICAL   ARABIAN.  255 

pages.  From  head  to  heel  he  is  a  Ku-hai-lan.  Those  who  beheve  pure  blood  to 
be  the  secret  at  once  of  racing  form,  durability,  symmetry,  and  beauty,  may  appeal 
to  him  for  proof;  but  this  view  is  not  just  now  before  us.  Our  immediate  object 
is  to  trace  in  "  the  little  grey  horse,"  as  far  as  possible,  the  essential  features  of  the 
desert  breed.  It  will  be  seen  hereafter,  when  the  colours  of  the  Arabian  are  spoken 
of,  that  Greyleg's  colour  is  one  of  the  praised  ones.  His  skin  was  of  the  tradi- 
tional ku-hail  colour,  which  an  Arab  poet  says  is  "  blacker  than  charcoal."  When 
in  his  prime,  his  silver-grey  coat  was  more  interspersed  with  nutmeg  roan  than 
perhaps  the  picture  indicates ;  and  the  red  spots  in  it  resembled  those  on  the 
speckled  shoulders  of  a  sea-trout.  Beginning  with  the  tout  ensemble,  or  general 
appearance,  what  superb  quality  meets  us ;  what  length  and  depth  and  substance ; 
and  what  unison  of  form,  from  the  elastic  and  capacious  nostril  to  the  tail  as  light 
and  airy  as  falling  water  !  The  outlines  present  no  abrupt  transitions  ;  the  junction 
of  the  neck  and  shoulder  forms  a  plane  and  only  slightly  undulating  surface ;  the 
ribs  come  out  from  the  spine  barrel  fashion  ;  he  is  beautiful  alike  behind  the  saddle 
and  before  it.  What  shape  and  finish  are  in  the  head  and  throat !  The  ears  are 
not  short  and  not  long — though  long  ears  may  be  seen  in  Arabians  of  the  highest 
class — but  loose  and  slender,  and  pointed  like  a  well-cut  pen.^  There  is  none  of 
that  narrowness  between  the  eyes  which  in  several  of  our  own  strains  denotes  a 
most  undesirable  form  of  "  cuteness  "  :  the  forehead  is  very  broad ;  and  the  eye  is 
large  and  prominent,  and  brimful  of  honesty,  courage,  and  gentleness.  Then  see 
the  neck!  To  enable  a  horse  "to  run  with  the  stout  or  wait  with  the  speedy,"  a 
strong,  deep,  broad  neck  is  essential ;  and  Greyleg's  neck  was  a  true  model,  equally 
removed  from  the  weak  and  tapering  and  from  the  bellator  eqtms  or  equestrian  statue 
types  ;  having  its  great  muscle  {splenius)  as  sharply  cut  as  the  blade  of  a  Damascus 
scimitar,  and  the  windpipe  full  of  play  and  freedom.  Mark  next  the  chest  and 
arms  ;  the  depth  from  the  withers  to  the  shoulder-points  ;  the  greyhound  dip  to 
hold  a  powerful  heart,  and  lungs  of  sufficient  volume  ;  the  long  forearms  ;  square 
bony  knee;  short  cannon,  with  tendons  behind  it  bigger  than  itself;  and  large, 
strong,  elastic  pasterns.  It  takes  a  great  deal  of  breeding  to  get  the  middle-piece  as 
true-made  as  it  was  in  Greyleg,  who,  with  all  his  general  length,  as  shown  by  the 
reach  of  ground  which  he  stood  over,  had  a  model  back  and  loins.  The  importance 
of  the  last-mentioned  parts  has  elsewhere  been  noticed.  But  a  shoulder  running 
far  into  the  back  is  so  essential  that,  instead  of  "  loins  and  hind-quarters,"  "  loins, 
back,  and  shoulder"  sounds  more  like  the  real  conjunction.  It  will  be  perceived 
that  Greyleg  had  not  the  "  straight-dropped  "  hind-leg,  like  a  camel's,  which  is  often 


'  The   poet   Ta-ra-fa   describes    his   riding-camel's     1     a  marl:  of  her  nobiUty  of  breed, 
ears  as  pointed,  or  sliarpeiiedj  and  mentions  this  as     1 


256  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

seen  in  racers.  He  had  wide  hips,  and  a  broad  pelvis.  We  have  never  seen  a 
horse  of  his  class  better  to  stand  behind  or  follow.  If  there  was  anything  angular 
or  projecting  about  him,  it  was  his  haunch-bones.  In  breadth  across  the  quarter 
from  the  stifle  backwards,  he  was  very  good.  The  chief  point  noticeable  in  his 
hind-legs  was  their  muscularity,  and  the  extraordinary  play  which  he  made  with 
them  in  his  faster  paces.  In  his  time  horses  were  galloped  in  clothing,  and  Brewty 
loved  to  be  out  before  daylight ;  but  Greyleg's  friends  could  always  recognise  him, 
when  he  was  set  in  motion,  by  the  rapidity  with  which  he  threw  forward  his 
hind-legs. 

Another  Arabian  race-horse  of  the  same  period.  Hermit,  well  deserves  to 
stand  before  the  reader  by  the  side  of  Greyleg.  Hermit  measured  fifteen  hands 
at  the  withers,  and  all  his  points  were  in  due  proportion ;  but  not  the  most  fas- 
tidious eye  could  find  fault  with  him  on  the  score  of  quality.  On  the  Bengal 
turf  he  was,  among  Arabs,  the  Eclipse  of  his  day.  It  is  true  that  on  one  occasion 
he  sustained  a  defeat  from  Greyleg.  At  that  time  the  Indian  railway  system  was 
in  the  early  stage,  and  a  Calcutta  horse  rarely  had  an  opportunity  of  meeting  a 
Mysore  one.  For  once,  however,  fate  so  arranged,  and  Hermits  owner,  with  the 
instinct  of  a  true  sportsman,  sent  him  out,  like  a  knight-errant,  to  challenge  and 
encounter  Greyleg.  The  result  was  that  which  is  so  often  witnessed  when  one 
horse  is  running  on  his  own  ground,  and  the  other  is  away  from  home.  No  horse  is 
the  same  every  day,  and  over  all  courses.  The  fact  that  Greyleg  lowered  Hermit's 
flag  at  the  Mysore  meeting  proved  no  more  than  that,  on  the  day,  over  the  course, 
and  as  the  race  was  run,  the  Calcutta  champion  was  somehow  at  a  disadvantage. 
The  likeness  of  Hermit  which  is  here  given  is  reproduced  from  an  oil-painting  in 
the  possession  of  his  owner,  General  M.  J.  Turnbull.  One  of  the  truest  friends 
that  man  or  horse  ever  had,  Mrs  M.  Turnbull,  did  us  the  honour  of  painting  a 
copy  of  the  picture  expressly  for  this  volume.  The  eye  which  is  set  on  picture- 
book  ideals  will  perhaps  dwell  with  greater  pleasure  on  Greyleg  than  on  Hermit ; 
but  the  more  of  substance  united  with  quality  which  the  Ku-hai-lan  exhibits,  the 
more  valuable  is  he.  It  is  possible  that  not  a  few  of  our  countrymen  who  have 
seen  good  Arabs  may  say  of  our  portraits  of  Greyleg  and  Hermit,  that  they  never 
came  across  flesh-and-blood  animals  which  agreed  with  them.  The  reason  is  not 
far  to  seek.  Horses  of  this  stamp  are  extremely  uncommon.  In  the  palmy  days 
of  cocking  we  know  what  innumerable  broods  of  black-reds  and  duck-wings  the 
hero  of  the  main  represented.  And  in  the  same  way  the  Arabs  breed  a  countless 
number  of  plain  animals  for  every  distinguished  specimen. 

Our  third  illustration.  Rex,  is  partly  chosen  because  of  the  opportunity  which 
he  offers  of  speaking  of  size  as  a  feature  of  the  "typical"  Arabian.  A  horse's 
general  size  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  his  mere  height  at  the  withers.      Once, 


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CHAP.   II. 


THE    TYPICAL   ARABIAN. 


257 


in  a  dispute  about  the  comparative  dimensions  of  England  and  Scotland,  the 
northener  clinched  the  argument  by  requiring  that  before  the  measurement  was 
taken,  all  the  mountains  in  the  latter  country  should  be  flattened !  And  in  the 
same  way,  many  a  pony  contains  sufficient  material  to  make  into  a  sixteen-hand 
horse,  good  enough  for  riding-school  purposes  ;  while  many  of  the  lathy  sort,  if 
compressed  into  "  little  big "  ones,  would  do  more  credit  to  their  owners.  A 
leggy  horse  may  suit  a  long  and  lanky  rider,  or  serve  to  elevate  as  a  pair  of 
high-heeled  boots  does  a  general  officer  above  his  aides-de-camp  ;  but  in  order 
to  make  a  "great-sized"  steed,  a  deep  and  broad  body,  and  not  a  set  of  stilts,  is 
wanted.  The  tape  conveys  more  useful  information  as  to  a  horse's  measurements 
than  the  standard  does,  and  the  latter,  after  having  been  held  over  the  withers, 
should  always  be  used  over  the  couplings  also.^  Many  of  our  countrymen  are 
under  the  impression  that  no  horse  which  exceeds  about  fourteen  hands  and  two 


'  Eclipse  "  rose  very  little  on  his  withers,"  and  was 
"higher  behind  than  before;"  %'.  Stubbs'  engraving, 
on  p.  177  of  Sidney's  Book  of  the  Horse.  In  the 
Arabian,  also,  the  hind-quarters  are  frequently  higher 
than  the  fore-hand  ;  and  in  picking  Arabs  for  racing, 
it  is  not  a  bad  plan  to  take  Eclipse  for  a  model.     The 


subjoined  likeness  (from  the  Orictttal  Sporting  Maga- 
zine, June  1870)  of  the  Hon.  A.  Stewart's  famous 
Arab,  Akbar,  shows  a  horse  among  whose  measure- 
ments were  "  fourteen  hands  and  half  an  inch  at  the 
withers,  and  fourteen  hands  two  and  a  half  inches 
over  the  loins ;  girth,  five  feet  and  six  inches." 


B.   A.  H.,  Akbar. 


Akbar's  owner  wrote  that  he  was  "an  excellent 
charger,  hunter,  and  pig-sticker."  The  Newmarket 
lad  who  rode  him  in  Calcutta  said  that  he  was  one 
of  the  only  two  "  real  good  movers "  which  he  had 
seen  in  India.  The  honest  bay  had  "largish  ears," 
a  zebra  stripe  down  the  back,  and  a  slightly  mulish 


look.  At  first  he  was  more  laughed  at  than  admired. 
After  he  had  shown  his  quality,  all  the  self-  styled 
judges,  as  usual,  merely  said  that  no  one  could 
form  an  opinion  of  an  Arab.  If  they  had  carefully 
looked  him  over,  perhaps  they  would  have  learned 
a  lesson. 


2  K 


2S8  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

inches  in  lieiglit  can  be  a  genuine  Arabian  ;  but  this  is  a  mistake.  Without  doubt, 
the  taller  a  horse  is,  especially  if  he  be  met  with  towards  the  Tigris  and  the 
Euphrates,  the  more  care  is  necessary  in  making  sure  that  he  is  true  bred.  But 
if  a  stature  of  from  thirteen  to  iifteen  hands  be  given  to  the  horse  of  Najd,  we 
shall  not  be  chargeable  with  founding  on  exceptions.  Food,  per  se,  has  a  direct 
influence  on  this  point.  The  workhouse  boy  does  not  usually  grow  into  a  man 
of  the  farmer  build  ;  and  it  has  been  seen  how,  as  a  rule,  the  Arabs  treat  their 
mares  and  horses.  Apart  from  special  causes,  the  small  fry  enormously  out- 
number their  larger  kindred  in  most  classes  of  animals.  In  the  Ku-hai-lin  family, 
the  proportion  of  Galloways  to  horses  of  superior  size  and  substance  must  be  as 
several  hundreds  to  one  unit. 

Rex  affords  a  beautiful  illustration  of  the  dwarf  Arabian.  For  many  years 
he  was  a  prominent  figure  on  the  turf  in  India.  He  ran  brilliantly,  not  only  in 
pony  and  Galloway  races,  but  over  the  longest  courses,  and  in  races  for  all  Arabs. 
At  last  a  sort  of  Indian  Ibnu  'r  Ra-shtd,  H.H.  the  Maharajah  of  Jodhpore,  in 
Rajputana,  added  him,  at  a  princely  price,  to  his  vast  stud  of  English,  Australian, 
Arab,  and  other  celebrities.  His  appearance  here  is  due  to  H.H.  the  Maharajah's 
kindness  in  supplying  a  life-like  sketch  in  oil  of  him.  Rex's  height  varied  from 
thirteen  hands  and  two  inches  to  slightly  over  it,  at  different  times  and  places  of 
measurement.  His  importer  was  the  horse  and  camel  merchant,  A'-id  bin  Ta- 
mi-mi  of  Najd,  who,  from  his  home  in  U'-nai-za,  a  township  of  the  Ka-sim  pro- 
vince, collects  colts  for  India.  There  is  no  worthier  or  honester  man  of  his  class 
than  A'-id,  and  most  winters  see  him  and  his  red  cloak  in  Bombay  with  horses. 
He  and  many  others  have  related  how  Rex  was  bought  as  a  weanling  from  his 
breeders  for  the  easy  equivalent  of  about  ^8  of  English  money.  As  usually  hap- 
pens, his  merits  escaped  notice.  Even  after  his  arrival  in  India  his  merits  remained 
unnoticed  until  his  performances  revealed  them.  Miniature  Arabians  of  his  stamp 
just  now  possess  a  special  interest  for  sportsmen,  owing  to  the  prevalence  of 
Galloway-racing,  pony-racing,  and  polo,  particularly  in  India.  It  is  a  misnomer 
to  call  horses  like  him  ponies.  The  little  ones  for  which  our  island,  Australasia, 
and  Arabia  are  now  so  diligently  searched  by  dealers,  are  in  reality  blood-horses 
which,  from  whatever  cause  or  causes,  fall  short  of  the  ordinary  standard.  Arabia, 
as  has  been  already  noticed,  yields  no  breed  resembling  our  Shetlanders  ;  and 
of  course  the  production,  systematically,  of  pedigree  ponies,  such  as  are  to  be 
seen  at  Rigmaden  Park  in  Westmoreland,  and  in  a  few  other  places,  is  beyond 
the  range  of  the  Bedouin.  The  Najdi  horse,  when  he  is  undersized,  too  often 
is  small-framed,  light-boned,  and  narrow;  and  one  like  Rex  is  perhaps  even 
harder  to  find  than  one  like  Hermit.  A  diminutive  Ku-hai-lan  is  called  by  the 
Bedouin  hi-sdn  ka-sir — i.e..   a  short  horse — which  is  exactly  what  he  is;   but  the 


CHAP.    II. 


THE    TYPICAL  ARABIAN. 


259 


jam-bazes  borrow  the  Indian  word  for  pony,  tat-td}  Every  time  that  an  unusual 
price  is  obtained  in  India  for  a  small  Arabian,  the  Bedouin  of  Sha-mi-ya  and 
Al  Ja-zi-ra  hear  of  it.  A  Shekh  of  the  Ae-ni-za  lately  sent  to  beg  of  us  a 
thirteen  hands  and  two  inches  measuring  standard.  A  piece  of  thin  brass  wire, 
fifty-four  inches  long,  was  accordingly  sent  to  him,  but  he  will  not  know  how  to 
use  it.  Jam-bazes  who  would  be  very  clever  carry  measuring-rods  ;  but  most  mem- 
bers of  the  fraternity  buy  every  animal  which  looks  like  "  keeping  the  money 
together,"  and  trust  to  "  luck "  on  the  day  of  measurement.  Many  good  sports- 
men look  coldly  on  pony-racing,  on  the  ground  that  it  interferes  with  the  "legiti- 
mate" game.  A  more  serious  objection  is,  that  it  encourages  the  practice  of 
paring  horses'  hoofs  to  the  quick  just  before  the  official  measurement,  and  keep- 
ing the  poor  animals  without  food  and  sleep,  so  that  they  shall  droop  under 
the  standard.  At  the  principal  racing  centres  in  India  there  are  farriers  and 
others  who  profess  to  be  experts  in  the  nefarious  art  of  thus  "cutting  down" 
horses.  Another  effect  of  pony-racing  in  India  is  to  promote  the  influx  of  counter- 
feit Arab  horses.  In  the  year  of  writing,  we  chanced  to  reach  Mu-ham-ma-ra, 
after  a  long  march  through  Persia,  just  when  the  jam-bazes  were  assembling  at 
the  sea-coast,  like  the  swallows  about  the  same  season  in  England,  before  taking- 
flight  with  their  year's  purchases  to  India.  There  happened  to  be  a  good-looking 
ka-dish,  young  and  under  "  pony  height,"  among  our  baggage-horses,  and  a  dealer 
bouorht  him  as  soon  as  he  was  unsaddled.  A  month  later  we  saw  the  same 
animal  standing  in  the  corner  box  of  a  Bombay  commission-stable.  At  first  this 
appeared  to  be  the  height  of  audacity  on  his  owner's  part,  but  the  fellow  had  not 
miscalculated.  In  a  short  time  a  highly  placed  and  highly  paid  official  of  the 
Government  accepted  the  late  carrier  of  our  pots  and  pans  as  of  the  "  breed  of 
Solomon,"  paid  a  ridiculous  price  for  him,  and  despatched  him  to  Calcutta.     "  Am 


'  Among  the  few  indigenous  Indian  things  which 
British  rule  has  spared  is  the  common  tat-ti'i,  of  from 
nine  to  thirteen  hands.  Now,  as  in  Akbars  time,  this 
active  creature  is  to  be  seen  on  every  road,  carrying 
an  "undivided  Hindu  family."  That  is,  a  "senior" 
and  a  "junior"  wife,  the  latter  probably  with  babies, 
are  seated  on  him,  atop  of  many  a  bag  of  household 
stuff,  with  innumerable  sundries,  not  forgetting  the 
parrot's  cage,  tied,  or  hung,  around  them.  The  proud 
possessor  of  all  this  happiness  trudges  at  the  tail,  to 
apply  the  stick  where  wanted.  The  tat-tii's  place  in 
agriculture  is  to  take  produce  to  the  market.  In 
certain  localities  he  comes  out  in  harness.  When 
the  Bengah  needs  something  faster  than  his  "cow- 
cart,"  he  mounts  a  one-horse  vehicle  called  an  ek-ka, 
in  connection  with  which  whole  provinces  are  famous 


for  what  truly  are  blood  -  tat-tus.  The  tat  -  tds  of 
Western  India  have  been  increased  in  size  by  the 
superior  climate  and  by  freer  crossing.  In  his  mili- 
tary capacity,  the  tat-tu  is  now  losing  ground  before 
the  mule,  but  no  army  moves  without  him.  His 
hardness  is  astonishing.  After  the  longest  day,  a 
fight  with  one  of  his  companions  seems  to  rein- 
vigorate  him.  If  he  is  borne  on  the  strength  of  a 
regiment,  a  corn  ration  is  issued  for  him  ;  but  his 
attendant  generally  saves  him  the  trouble  of  eating 
it.  If  the  property  of  a  camp-follower,  his  fore-legs 
are  tied  together  after  his  burden  is  taken  off,  and 
he  is  left  to  hop  about  in  quest  of  what  will  seri'e 
him.  Nevertheless,  many  a  gallant  boar  has  been 
laid  low  from  the  back  of  a  tat-tia  which  has  had  a 
little  good  keep. 


26o  THE   ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

I  not  thine  own  ass  ?  "  the  honest  quadruped  seemed  to  say  to  us,  as  he  was  being 
galloped  up  and  down  before  his  new  owner.  Inside  of  a  yard,  after  a  long  course 
of  eating  and  sleeping,  with  a  couple  of  horse-keepers  to  polish  him,  the  I'ra-kt 
mongrel  will  look  as  if  the  place  could  not  contain  him  ;  but  on  the  open  plain  he 
draws  in  his  horns.  If  he  be  put  in  training,  the  clumsy  neck  and  long  flat 
barrel  will  not  lone  remain  hidden.  These  remarks  are  not  directed  at  the 
jam-bazes.  As  long  as  people  in  India  continue  to  buy  I'ra-ki  cattle,  at  prices  not 
unaffected  by  turf  and  polo  honours  in  prospect,  they  may  depend  on  a  full  supply  of 
the  article.  And,  moreover,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  dealers  whose 
homes  are  in  Najd  often  bring  round  ka-dishes.  A'-id  bin  Ta-mi-mi,  and  many 
of  his  associates,  shun  both  Bussorah  and  Muhammara.  Such  men  march  their 
horses  straight  to  Ku-wait,  and,  in  their  Semitic  love  of  cheapness,  as  well  as  to 
escape  Persian  contacts,  ship  them  in  Arab  baghlas,  or  sailing-boats,  instead  of 
steamers,  at  the  risk  of  losing  several  animals  during  the  protracted  and  uncertain 
voyage. 

The  next  aspect  of  the  typical  Arabian  which  has  to  be  presented  to  the  reader 
is  his  colour.  No  question  is  more  frequently  put  to  us  on  the  subject  of  Arab 
horses  than  what  is  the  correct  or  the  best  colour  ?  In  England  an  antiquated  idea 
lingers  that  the  authentic  Arab  must  be  grey.  A  most  distinguished  predecessor 
in  this  consulate.  General  Sir  H.  C.  Rawlinson,  exhibited  in  1864  a  bay  Arabian, 
stated  "to  have  a  pedigree  of  four  hundred  years";  and  London  actually  objected 
to  him  on  the  score  of  his  being  a  bay,  and  not  a  grey.  This  illusion  is  sanctioned 
by  Palgrave,  who  says  in  his  article  "  Arabia "  in  the  Ency.  Brit}  that  "  dark 
bay  never"  occurs  in  the  "genuine  Nejdee."  If  by  "dark  bay"  he  meant  dark 
brown  or  quasi  black,  the  statement  might  be  received,  subject  to  qualification. ^ 
But  speaking  of  "  dark  bay  "  as  understood  by  horsemen,  every  Arab  prizes  it.  In 
rhapsodies  about  horses  by  desert  riders,  we  have  twice  seen  the  bay  colour  set 
above  every  other.^  In  one  such  passage  the  descriptive  used  is  ah-mar,  meaning 
red}  Perhaps  ah-mar  includes  chestnut.  And  perhaps  the  same  word  denotes  in 
strictness  the  bright  or  golden  bay.  But  unquestionably  the  ancient  Arabic  word 
kii-mait  which  Im-ru  '1  Kais  uses  signifies  dark  bay.  Kti-mait  is  explained  in 
dictionaries  as  the  dark  red  /nte,  verging  towards  black,  of  the  fresh  ripe  date.  A 
classical  Arabian  poet,  in  telling  his  audience  that  his  hunter  was  ku-mait,  says  that 
the  colour  was  not  an  uncertain  one,  such  as  a  man  would  have  to  be  put  to  his  oath 
about,  but  that  of  the  herb  with  which  the  hide  that  has  been  dyed  is  dyed  a  second 
time.     The  reader  may  depend  upon  it  that  bay  is  now  as  well  established  a  colour 


^  Vol.  ii.  p.  241. 

^  See,  however,  a7ite,  p.  57. 

^   V.  ante,  pp.  61  and  143. 


''  The  feminine  form  of  ah-?iiar,  with  the  def  article, 
lingers  in  Europe  in  the  name  of  the  historical  hill- 
fortress,  and  palace  of  the  Moorish  kings  of  Granada. 


CHAP.  II.  THE    TYPICAL    ARABIAN.  261 

in  Al  Kham-sa  as  it  was  before  the  Arabs  possessed  written  compositions.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  quote  a  higher  authority  on  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses 
than  the  late  A-mir  Fai-sal  of  Najd.  His  Highness  informed  Colonel  Pelly  that 
the  finest  Arabian  horses  may  be  of  any  colour  ;  that  the  prevalent  colour  among  the 
first  blood  was  various  shades  of  grey  ;  that,  as  a  rule,  the  foal  received  its  colour 
from  its  sire ;  that,  on  the  whole,  colour  went  for  little,  and  height  for  nothing,  and 
that  blood  was  everything.^  Further  information  regarding  the  colours  of  Arabian 
horses  is  presented  in  a  convenient  form  in  the  Table  which  is  included  in  this 
chapter. 

Lieut.-Col.  Ham.  Smith,  whose  classic  work  on  horses  is  that  of  an  accom- 
plished naturalist,  describes  the  Arabian  breed  as  one  of  "  great  admixture  "  ;  ^  and 
this  view  is  illustrated  by  the  diversity  of  the  colours  which  are  displayed  by  it.  At 
the  same  time,  the  diversity  has  its  limits.  Thus,  the  dun  colour  is  most  unusual 
in  Arabian  horses.  Sooty  blacks  prevail  in  the  vulgar  stock  of  the  pastoral  and 
ao-ricultural  Kurds  round  Kar-kuk  and  Mosul,  whose  oxen  also  show  a  cjreat  deal 
of  the  same  colour.  There  are,  however,  many  different  classes  of  black  horses,  and 
those  of  the  Kurds  can  have  no  real  relationship  with  the  black  Arabians,  one  of 
which  was  taken  by  Youatt  as  a  model.  Not  half-a-dozen  Arabians  of  this  colour 
have  made  footprints  on  the  turf  in  India.  Occasionally  we  hear  of  a  noble  black 
which  is  the  boast  of  the  Ae-ni-za  ;  but  such  of  the  colour  as  come  our  way  too 
much  resemble  the  dismal  quadrupeds  which  in  Europe  are  reserved  for  the  last 
scene  of  all.  Practically,  the  Ku-hai-lan  colours  are  bay  and  chestnut,  and  the 
numerous  different  shades  of  grey  and  roan.  Nobody  can  pretend  to  say  of  any 
one  of  these  colours  that  it  is  more   "typical"  than  another. 

It  is  well  known  that  there  are  several  knotty  points  concerning  colour  which 
the  most  eminent  investigators  of  Europe  and  America  are  still  discussing.  Such 
questions  do  not  bear  more  directly  on  Arab  horses  than  on  horses  generally ;  and 
the  results  of  horse-breeding  among  the  Arabs  offer  little,  if  any,  guidance  in  regard 
to  them.  But  before  passing  from  colour,  we  wish  just  to  indicate  some  of  the 
various  questions  which  are  connected  with  it. 

First,  then,  is  there  any  warrant  for  the  common  impression  that  a  horse's 
character  may  be  inferred  from  the  colour  of  his  hairy  covering  ?  We  have  all  heard 
of  "  temperaments  " — the  nervous,  the  bilious,  the  sanguine,  and  the  lymphatic — and 
their  combinations,  and  of  the  indications  of  them  which  the  colour  of  the  hair  is 
supposed  to  furnish  in  human  beings.  It  is  certain  that  the  leading  peculiarities  of 
these  temperaments,  denoting  differences  in  brain  and  muscle,  circulation  and  diges- 
tion, are  characteristic  in  horses  also  not  merely  of  the  different  breeds,   but,  in  a 

'■  op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  28,  p.  55  ;  et  v.  ante,  p.  36.      |        ^   Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  22,  p.  210. 


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BOOK  IV. 


TABLE   OF   THE   COLOURS 

^.—COLOURS    AKIN    TO    BAY. 


Arabic  Names. 


Horse. 


Ku-mait 


Ah-mar 


Ash-kar 


Mare. 


Ham-ra 


Shak-ra 


Ad-ham 


As-wad 


Dah-ma 


Sau-da 


Explanations. 


Dark  bay 


■  Bay.  As  applied  to 
horses,  K21.  -  mait 
and  ah-mar  are 
the  same 


Chestnut 


'Equally  "coal-black" ' 
and    dark    brown. 
If    not    black,   so 
black    as   to   pass 
for  black 


Black 


REMARKS. 


"  Bay  with  black  points  "  is  As-da. 


The  Arabs  use  "  Al  Ah-mar  "  to  denote  a 
European. 


'In  Ku-mait  or  Ah-mar  the  mane  and 
tail  are  black  ;  in  Ash-kar,  red  or 
sorrel.  Chestnut  of  a  dark  copper 
colour,  called  by  Indian  horsemen  after 
the  fruit  of  the  mahua  tree  {Bassia 
latifolia),  is  not  very  common  in  Ara- 
bian blood-horses. 


Rare  in  Al  Kham-sa. 


Ad-ham  and  As-wad  are  synonymous ; 
but  horsemen  say  ad- ham ;  just  as  we 
do  not  speak  of  a  red  horse,  but  of  a 
"bay"  or  a  "chestnut."  The  old  poets 
call  a  dark  -  coloured,  or  pitch  -  black, 
horse  jatcn ;  and  this  colour  was  evi- 
dently much  esteemed. 


CHAP.   II. 


THE    TYPICAL  ARABIAN. 


263 


PROPER  TO    ARABIAN    HORSES. 

^.— THE    WHITE,    GREY,    AND    ROAN    COLOURS. 


Arabic  Names. 


Horse. 


As-far 


As-hab 


Ash-hab 


Am-lah 


Ash-a'l 


Ni-li 


Az-rak 


Mare. 


Saf-ra 


Sah-ba 


Shah-ba 


Mal-ha 


Sha'-la 


Rum-ma-ni 


Ab-rash 


Zar-ka 


r  Rum-ma- 
i      ni-ya 


Bar-sha 


Explanations. 


'(i)    White,     with     a\ 
saffron  or  sorrel  | 
infusion,  which  I 
is  chiefly  appar-    > 
ent  in  the  mane 
and  tail 

,(2)    Milk-white 


y 


17^  S2ipra. 


Ut supra;  except  that ' 
the  infusion  into  the 
white    is    blackish, 
not  yellowish. 

'  Of  the  colour  of  viilh 
=  (i)milk;(2)crude 
salt — i.e.,  practical- 
ly, "  silver-grey  " 

Much  as  above 

r  The  colour  of  nil,  in-  "( 
i      digo.     Blue-grey      J 

(K  lighter  variety  of ' 
the  above.  A  blue 
or  blue-grey  colour, 
which  is  common  in 
Nature — e.g.,  in  the 
eye 


From    rum -mail,  the 

pomegranate. 
"  Nutmeg-grey" 


REMARKS. 


Marked  with  flecks 
differing  from  the 
main  colour. 

"  Flea-bitten  grey  " 


The  Bedouin  include  all  whites  and  light  greys  as  as-far.  The 
"  iTTTTO'i  %\(u/309,"  or  "  pale  horse,"  of  the  Apocalypse,  must  have 
been  of  this  colour.  In  Arabic  and  Persian  respectively,  the 
exact  equivalents  o{ 'yXmpo';  are  ak/i-d/iar  and  sadsa — meaning, 
is^,  and  generally,  the  green  of  new  verdure  ;  2d,  and  spe- 
cially, the  grey  colour  in  horses. 


Applied  to  all  the  vaguer  shades  of  grey. 


Strictly  (in  El  I'rak),  when  there  is  much  white  on  the  face  and  tail. 

Opener,  and  with  less  of  black,  than  our  "  iron-grey,"  which  is 
more  of  a  ka-dish  than  a  Ku-hai-Ian  colour.  [Nzl,  indigo,  is  a 
loan  word  in  Arabic,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  name  of 
the  great  river  of  Africa.] 

'Much  prized.  Even  further  from  "iron-grey"  than  is  the  m-/i. 
Dappling  is  not  very  common  in  Ku-hai-lans.  Of  greys, 
perhaps  the  az-rak  most  inclines  to  a  light  fleecy  grey. 

The  "  Mu-war-rad,"  or  "  rose  "  colour  of  Najd.  Within  its  range, 
this,  like  all  the  greys,  admits  of  different  proportions  of 
white,  red,  and  black.  The  desert  contains  no  vulgar,  patchy, 
or  mealy  roans ;  and  no  flesh-coloured  muzzles  and  pink 
orifices.  The  true  "  nutmeg  roan  "  or  "  nutmeg  grey  "  runs  the 
bay  colour  close  for  the  prize  of  excellence  in  the  Arabian 
breed.     However  white  in   the  course  of  years  a  rum-ma-ni 

V     turns,  his  "  strawberry  "  spots  remain. 

Bay  or  black  pencils  which  come  out  of  a  white,  or  a  grey,  coat. 
The  true  "  flea-bitten  "  generally  grows  more  and  more  so  with 
age.  Some  say  that  there  never  is  a  sorry  horse  of  this  mark- 
ing. It  may  be  so  ;  but  though  the  colour  undoubtedly  runs 
in  Ku-hai-lans,  yet  it  is  also  common  in  ka-dishes.  The 
Persians  and  Indians  call  it  ma-ga-si — from  magas,  a  fly. 


264 


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BOOK.   IV. 


minor  degree,  of  different  individuals.  Why,  then,  may  not  a  horse's  colour  help 
us  to  draw  conclusions  as  to  his  temper  in  the  sense  of  "  manners," — that  is, 
whether  he  is  more  inclined  to  knock  one's  brains  out,  or  cheerfully  to  do  what 
is  required  of  him  ?  As  to  this,  the  Arabs  are  ready  with  the  theory  that  the 
testimony  of  colour  is  important.  One  of  their  sayings  is.  The  kings  of  horse-kind 
are  those  which  are  of  a  dark  colotir}  If  this  mean  that  whatever  the  colour  may 
be,  the  intenser  or  more  pronounced  it  is,  the  better  the  horse  will  be,  then  it  is 
worth  considering.  Another  Eastern  saying  is,  that  one  should  be  slow  to  buy  a 
chestnut  horse,  and  still  slower  to  sell  one  of  that  colour  which  has  turned  out  well ; 
but  the  same  maxim  applies  to  the  buying  and  selling  of  horses  of  all  colours.  On 
this,  as  on  so  many  other  subjects,  the  lore  of  the  Arabs,  at  any  rate  in  towns  and 
villages,  has  a  good  deal  of  superstition  engrained  in  it.  An  example  of  this  is, 
their  absurd  notions  about  "lucky  and  unlucky"  markings.  Many  millions  of 
Eastern  people  still  think  that  life,  or  wealth,  or  conjugal  honour  may  be  connected 
with,  for  instance,  in  a  "  white-stockinged "  ^  horse,  the  number  of  limbs  thus 
marked,  and  the  height  to  which  the  colour  rises !  ^  Another  branch  of  the  same 
oriental  goose-lore  draws  its  presages  from  whorls  in  the  hair.  Curly  places,  or 
"  feathers,"  of  certain  shapes  and  in  certain  situations,  are  taken  for  omens  that  he 
who  owns  or  mounts  the  horse  will  rue  it ;  and  similar  arrangements  of  the  hair  on 
other  spots,  for  assurances  of  prosperity.  Ridiculous  as  all  this  is,  it  occasionally 
proves  useful.  When  the  owner  of  a  long  purse  wishes  to  refuse  a  horse  which 
an  obliging  friend  would  foist  on  him,  convenient  objections  are  to  be  found  in 
these  markings.  And,  moreover,  "feathers"  on  a  horse's  neck  or  body  no  more 
indicate  higrh  breeding  than  a  twist  in  the  beard  does  in  man.  Horses  in  whose 
coats  the  hair  thus  disports  Itself  are  commoner  among  the  Sham-mar  than  among 
the  Ae-ni-za.  And  thus  may  superstition,  perhaps  but  half  believed  in,  supply 
the  place  of  knowledge  in  saving  men  from  bad  bargains.  Europe  also  keeps  its 
little  idols  on  the  point  of  colour.  "  A  good  horse  is  never  of  a  bad  colour,"  is  one 
of  those  truisms  which  mean  little.  When  a  horse  is  before  us  of  which  we  know 
not  whether  he  is  good  or  bad,  the  question  is  whether  any  clue  to  this  may  be 
found  in  his  colour  ?  We  often  hear  all  the  chestnuts  in  the  world  included  in  one 
condemnation,  as  hot-tempered,  or  "  washy,"  or  something  else  ;  and  it  is  not  to  be 
denied  that  there  are  grounds  for  this  opinion.     There  have  been  a  great  many 


1  "  Mu-lu-ku  V  kliail  diih-mu-]id."  Dithm,  pi.  of 
ad-ham — q.  v.  in  Part  A.  of  Table  of  the  Colours  pro- 
per to  Arabian  Horses. 

^  Stockings  enter  less  into  Arab  life  than  riding 
through  rivers  does.  Accordingly,  a  horse  with  "all 
four  white  "  to  above  the  knees  and  hocks  is,  in  Arabic, 
mu  -  khaw  -  wadh,  because   his   appearance   suggests 


that  he  has  ]\xs\.  passed  through  a  ford.  A  horse  which 
has  one,  two,  or  three  white  pasterns,  is  called  mu-haj- 
jal — lit.,  ankleted,  or  shackled. 

^  The  importance  which  the  old  Arabs  attached  to 
a  dash  of  white  on  the  mare's  face  was  noticed  at 
p.  61,  a7ite. 


CHAP.   II. 


THE    TYPICAL   ARABIAN. 


265 


chestnuts  which,  owing  to  their  essential  bad  quahties,  have  been  worse  than 
useless.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  stud  statistics  attest  the  pre-eminence  of  the 
chestnut  colour.  Was  not  this  the  uniform  of  Eclipse  and  Plenipotentiary, 
Stockwell,  and  his  blaze-faced  son,  Blair  Athol  ?  Some  of  the  best  Arabs  that  ever 
trod  the  turf  in  India  have  been  of  this  colour.  Long  ago,  when  it  was  permitted 
us  to  drive  a  coach,  we  always  drove  chestnuts,  because  of  the  beautiful  manner  in 
which  the  Eastern  sun  lights  up  their  jackets.  Many  chestnut  horses,  both  Arabians 
and  Australians,  have  thus  received  their  schooling  from  us.  Some  of  them,  when 
first  taken  up,  brought  little  credit  on  their  colour — one  minute  gaily  trying  to  pull 
the  whole  coach,  and  the  next  minute  jibbing  without  either  sense  or  reason.  But 
many  others  were  not  to  be  surpassed  in  natural  sweetness  of  temper.  The  devil 
does  not  dress  all  his  servants  in  jackets  of  the  same  colour.  Our  advice  to  the 
reader  is,  by  all  means  to  consider  colour,  but  to  understand  that  it  is  only  one  of 
many  other  points  which  require  to  be  weighed  in  the  scales  of  knowledge  and 
experience  before  a  sound  opinion  can  be  formed.  Above  all  things,  it  is  necessary 
not  to  hamper  ourselves  with  "  notions,"  if  we  would  buy  the  best  horses.^ 

Another  set  of  facts  relating  to  colour  are  those  which  seem  to  invest  it  with 
significance  as  an  indication  of  breed,  or  breeding.  Before  Darwin,  colour  passed 
for  a  mere  piece  of  natural  ornamentation,  designed  to  give  pleasure  to  mankind. 
A  pastoral  passage  in  Genesis  was  much  quoted  in  this  connection.^  Numerous 
facts  of  common  observation,  notably  those  turning  on  the  relations  between  locality 
and  colouration,  seemed  at  first  sight  to  involve  the  view  that  colour  is  a  trivial 
character  which  is  prone  to  vary.  In  certain  parts  of  Najd,  the  tawny  hue  gives 
place  to  the  black  one  in  camels.  In  our  island  the  mountain-hare  becomes  white 
in  September,  to  resume  its  russet  coat  in  May.  Alterations  of  bodily  state  or 
structure  in  the  individual  are  frequently  followed  by  changes  in  the  colour  of  the 
hair.  A  horse  now  in  our  possession,  which  when  cut  in  1882,  as  a  five-year-old, 
was  a  sound  bay,  among  other  deviations  from  the  male  type  has  turned  more  of  a 
weak  chestnut.  The  hair  which  grows  after  a  wound  is  white.  Darwin's  specula- 
tions on  the  origin  and  uses  of  colour  in  animals  may  be  read  in  other  books.  We 
have  now  only  to  say  that  the  old    naturalists  Avho    held  colour  to   be   an   unim- 


^  The  Government  of  India,  in  its  operations  for  the 
improvement  of  native  breeds,  now  taboos  grey  stal- 
lions. Not  knowing  the  grounds  or  objects  of  the  de- 
sired exclusion  of  horses  of  this  colour  from  regiments 
and  batteries,  we  can  but  assume  this  restriction  to 
be  well  founded.  But  it  every  year  puts  on  one  side, 
in  a  not  too  well  supplied  market,  horses  which  other- 
wise would  be  most  eligible.  In  the  unfixed  state  of 
colour  in  the  Arabian  breed,  many  a  grey  Arab  has  on 
both  sides  bay  or  chestnut  parents. 


2  "  And  Jacob  took  him  rods  of  fresh  poplar,  and  of 
the  almond  and  of  the  plane  tree ;  and  peeled  white 
strakes  in  them,  and  made  the  white  appear  which  was 
in  the  rods.  And  he  set  the  rods  which  he  had  peeled 
over  against  the  flocks  in  the  gutters  in  the  water- 
ing-troughs where  the  flocks  came  to  drink  ;  and  they 
conceived  when  they  came  to  drink.  And  the  flocks 
conceived  before  the  rods,  and  the  flocks  brought 
forth  ringstraked,  speckled,  and  spotted." — Chap.  -xxx. 
37-39  (revis.  vers.) 


2  L 


266 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK   IV. 


portant  character  had  many  facts  not  very  consistent  with  that  opinion  before 
them.  As  a  rule,  colour  is  constant  in  each  species  of  wild  animal  ;  and  variega- 
tion waits  on  domestication.  A  white  elephant  is  as  rare  as  a  white  Hindu. ^ 
The  slight  differences  of  colour  in  a  sounder  of  wild  hog,  or  herd  of  deer,  or  shoal 
of  perch,  chiefly  follow  sex  or  period  of  life.  The  breeder  of  domestic  animals 
modifies  colour,  as  just  stated,  in  the  same  way  that  he  does  most  other  characters  ; 
but  he  cannot  get  rid  of  the  old  grit.  In  the  Leicester  breed  of  sheep,  after  a 
century  of  cultivation,  grey-faced,  black-spotted,  or  wholly  black  lambs  still  occur. 
In  horses  certain  markings  seem  indelible — for  example,  the  dark  patch  on  one 
hind-quarter  which  is  so  common  in  the  descendants  of  Eclipse,  though  we  have 
also  seen  it  in  mongrel  I'rakts  ;  and  the  spinal  stripe  which  Darwin  used  to  support 
the  view  of  the  horse  being  a  co-descendant  with  the  ass,  the  quagga,  and  the  zebra, 
of  some  striped  and  extinct  progenitor.^  But  further,  if  the  immediate  effect  of 
domestication  on  colour  be  to  variegate  it,  most  of  our  pure  and  valued  artificial 
breeds  are  characterised  by  definite  colours  which  constitute  one  of  their  distinctive 
marks.  In  the  "Pepper  and  Mustard"  terriers,  for  instance,  it  is  seldom  that  pied 
puppies,  or  puppies  which  are  not  either  slaty-blue  or  sand  colour,  appear.  One 
reason  of  this  is,  that  when  irregularly  marked  specimens  occur,  they  are  promptly 
drowned  ;  but  perhaps  the  two  colours  in  question  are  the  more  easily  fixed  be- 
cause natural  to  the  dog.  On  the  other  hand,  who  can  deny  that  the  modern 
English  greyhound  is  very  highly  bred  ?  and  yet,  see  how  diverse  his  colours 
are.  Antiquity  abounds  in  references  to  breeds  of  horses  all  of  one  colour, 
especially  white — the  colour  with  respect  to  which  the  erroneous  view  is  preva- 
lent that  it  is  not  natural  or  original,  but  the  result  of  old  age.  Marco  Polo, 
in  describing  "the  city  of  Chandu,"  mentions  that  the  sovereign  of  the  Tatars, 
"  Cublay  by  name,"  kept  "an  immense  stud  of  white  horses  and  mares,  in  fact, 
more  than  ten  thousand  of  them,  and  all  pure  white  without  a  speck,"  the  milk 
of  which  was  drunk  by  the  Kaan  and  his  family,  and  by  none  else,  except  one 
great  tribe,  on  whom  the  privilege  had  been  conferred  by  his  grandsire  Jenghis 
Kaan.^     Sir  W.   Scott,    in   chapter    xl.   of    The  Antiqitary,  following,    as   may  be 


^  The  colour  of  the  Hindu's  hair  is  even  more  fixed 
than  that  of  his  skin.  This  fact  receives  illustration 
in  the  offspring,  in  India,  of  European  fathers  and 
dusky  mothers.  Even  when  both  parents  are  Eura- 
sians, and  very  dark,  several  of  their  children  may  be 
white-skinned.  But  fair  hair  is  never  seen  in  the 
most  European-looking  Eurasian.  If  even  the  great- 
grandmother  have  been  Indian,  and  her  husband, 
with  all  the  intervening  steps  of  descent,  pure  Euro- 
pean, the  hair  will  be  black.  In  the  races  which  in- 
habit El  I'rak,  the  black  colour  of  the  hair  seems  less 
firmly  fixed  than  in  Indians. 


^  Darwin  should  have  seen  the  comparatively  un- 
crossed breeds  of  horses,  mostly  dun  or  slate-coloured, 
and  remarkable  for  their  hardy  constitutions,  power 
of  endurance,  and  indomitable  tempers,  which  still 
exist  in  several  remote  provinces  of  India,  especially 
Kathiawar.  Not  only  the  spinal  stripe,  but  with  it 
the  asinine  bars  on  the  forearm  and  shoulder,  are 
scarcely  more  conspicuous  in  the  zebra  than  in  these 
equines,  among  whose  characteristics  are  long  ears, 
having  the  points  much  turned  in^vard. 

^  Marco  Polo,  Sir  H.  Yule's  edit.  (1875),  vol.  i.  p. 
291. 


CHAP.  II.  THE    TYPICAL  ARABIAN.  267 

assumed,  some  sound  tradition,  makes  an  aged  woman  croon  the  following  fragment, 
having  reference  to  the  Earl  of  Mar's  cavalry  of  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Harlaw 

(141 1):— 

"  They  saddled  a  hundred  milk-white  steeds, 
They  hae  bridled  a  hundred  black, 
With  a  chafron  of  steel  on  each  horse's  head, 
And  a  good  knight  upon  his  back." 

And,  to  name  no  more,  Lord  Beaconsfield,  in  Alroy,  introduces  another  race  of 
white  horses — the  white  Anatolian,  to  which,  and  not  to  the  Arabian,  he  assigns 
pre-eminence  in  equine  history.  So  far,  all  is  in  the  ordinary  course.  The  pro- 
duction by  man,  through  "  methodical  selection,"  of  breeds  of  horses  of  one  colour, 
is  as  intelligible  as  the  distribution  by  Nature  of  troops  of  wild  horses,  every  indi- 
vidual of  which  resembles  the  surface  of  the  ground.  But  another  fact  here  presents 
itself  which  seems  still  to  await  explanation.  Except  in  so  far  as  statistics  show 
that  there  have  been  more  winners  of  one  colour  than  of  another  colour,  Enelish 
breeders  for  the  turf  may  safely  be  acquitted  of  all  preference,  or  fancy,  respecting 
colour.  And  yet,  equally  in  our  islands  and  at  the  antipodes,  the  long  course  of 
scientific  breeding  of  which  our  racing  stock  is  the  product  has  practically  resulted 
in  its  becoming  a  family  of  bays  and  chestnuts — two  colours  essentially  one.  In 
olden  times,  when  England  was  full  of  fresh  Eastern  blood,  greys  were  as  often 
seen  at  the  starting-post  as  they  were  down  to  a  much  later  period  in  New  South 
Wales  and  Victoria.  In  a  book  published  in  1866,^  it  is  "estimated"  that  the  Derby 
had  been  won  during  the  previous  thirty  years  by  7  chestnuts,  7  browns,  and 
16  bays;  the  St  Leger  by  5  chestnuts,  8  browns,  and  17  bays;  and  the  Oaks  in 
like  proportion.  Of  course,  there  are  exceptions.  The  Greyfriars  of  our  day  may 
have  been  as  good  a  horse,  though  he  was  not  so  successful,  as  the  Grey  Momus  of 
that  of  our  grandfathers.  But  cases  like  this — in  all  probability  reversions — are 
merely  those  that  prove  the  rule ;  and  apparently  the  conclusion  confronts  us,  that 
the  tendency  of  the  highest  breeding,  in  latitudes  far  separated,  is  to  wipe  out  in 
horses  all  colours  save  bay  and  chestnut. 

So  far  we  have  confined  ourselves  to  the  outer  aspect  of  the  typical  Arabian. 
In  point  of  personal  character,  the  subject  of  our  description  merely  carries  us,  as  it 
were,  into  the  inner  circle  of  Al  Kham-sa.  With  the  tide  now  running  so  strongly 
in  Europe  towards  edzication,  it  is  interesting  to  notice  how  firmly  the  Arabs  still 
believe  in  breeding.  Generosus  nascihir  non  fit  is  a  principle  to  which  they  do 
not  attach  any  limitation.  When  they  perceive  a  colt  sulking  under  the  spur, 
and  displaying  other  mulish  symptoms,  what  instantly  strikes  them  is,  not  that  he 

^  Tlie  Turf  and  the  Race  Horse,  by  R.  H.  Copperthwaite,  2d  edition  (Day  &  Son),  p.  144. 


268  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

requires  tuition,  but  that  lie  is,  as  we  siiould  say,  "  bad  from  the  egg."  It  is 
necessary,  however,  to  protest  against  the  idea  that  the  Najdi  horse  is  wanting  in 
resolution.  The  instinct  of  noli  me  tangere  is  well  developed  in  him.  It  is  not  for 
nothing  that  his  head,  instead  of  being  small  and  meaningless  like  a  sheep's,  is  broad 
and  full  in  the  frontal  part.  His  admirable  self-command  habitually  subdues  the 
fire  of  his  highly  nervous  temperament  ;  but  if  any  one  would  fight  him,  he  will  fight. 
A  yahoo  of  a  rider  may  exhaust  his  patience.  Even  the  noble  mare,  which  the  Arabs 
compare  to  the  high-born  lady  on  whom  it  is  meet  that  all  maidens  should  attend, 
frequently  shows  her  aversion  when  those  whom  she  does  not  know  approach  her. 
The  stallion  picketed  beside  the  tent  is  as  good  as  a  sentinel.  The  first  sound  of 
an  intruder  brings  him  to  attention.  Generally  he  will  stamp  with  one  fore-foot, 
and  challenge ;  not  braying  like  a  ka  -  dish,  but  sounding  one  or  two  short  and 
sharp  notes,  to  intimate  that  he  will  make  no  terms.  On  the  open  plain,  his  strong 
character  is  even  more  exhibited.  He  seems  to  increase  in  size  when  moved  from 
his  standing-place.  After  a  gallop,  every  joint  and  sinew  and  useful  part  stand 
out,  as  if  made  by  work  and  for  work.  There  is  very  little  of  the  mere  "pet" 
about  him.  When  his  glance  is  not  fixed  on  some  object  near  him,  in  which 
he  imagines  that  there  is  danger,  he  is  always  scanning  the  horizon.  His  gentle 
salutations  of  passing  mares  are  widely  different  sounds  from  the  bagpipe  -  like 
squeals  of  the  I'raki  stallion.  At  the  sight  of  a  crowd  he  neighs  out  musically, 
like  one  who  is  delighted  to  meet  others  of  his  species.  Most  of  all,  a  whoop  excites 
him.  In  a  moment  his  thoughts  appear  to  revert  to  Al  ghaz-u  ;  and  if  a  towns- 
man be  on  his  back,  and  he  be  fresh,  he  will  require  a  great  deal  of  steadying.  It 
is  said  that  the  Bedouin  wake  up  their  horses'  ears  for  life  by  shouting  into  them, 
at  the  top  of  their  voices,  as  soon  as  possible  after  the  foal  is  dropped. 


269 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE    ARABIAN    IN    SHA-Ml-YA    AND    AL    JA-ZI-RA. 

A  SALIENT  fact  much  insisted  on  in  what  precedes  has  here  to  be  carried 
forward.  That  is,  that  the  description  of  the  a-sil  Arabian  which  has  been 
attempted  is  equally  applicable  in  Najd  and  outside  of  it.  At  least  it  is  essentially 
so,  seeing  that  he  is  the  horse  of  nomads  ;  though  the  modifying  influences  of  food, 
work,  soil,  air,  and  water  have  also  to  be  remembered.  In  so  far  as  data  are  avail- 
able, the  view  may  reasonably  be  adopted  that  the  Ku-hai-lan  tends  on  the 
Euphrates,  through  the  power  of  barley,  to  excel  in  physique  his  brother  in  Nu- 
fudh-land.  It  is  recorded  of  the  Darley,  that  as  a  four-year-old  he  was  "about  15 
hands  high."  The  authority  for  this  is  his  owner's  letter  which  was  quoted  at  p. 
165  ante.  There  is  no  means  of  ascertaining  whether  the  great-great-grandfather 
of  Eclipse,  as  pedigree  tables  represent  him,  first  beheld  the  world  in  which  he 
was  to  obtain  such  distinction  from  some  valley  thick  with  mi-si  and  the  feathery 
ithl  in  the  heart  of  the  peninsula ;  or  in  the  deserts  west  of  the  Euphrates,  where 
Mr  Darley  bought  him.  But  we  know  of  many  other  scions  of  Al  Kham-sa  more 
or  less  resembling  him,  that  never  were  out  of  Sha-mt-ya  or  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  from  the 
date  of  foaling  to  that  of  export.  Such  were  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  invincibles 
which  made  the  Agha  Khan  cap  and  jacket  the  terror  of  Western  India  race- 
courses, from  about  1850  to  1880.  One  of  these  furnishes  our  frontispiece.  All  the 
time  that  the  "  Agha  Khan  "  who  first  took  refuge  in  India  "  kept  his  court  in  grand 
and  noble  style"  in  Bombay  and  Poona,  as  did  his  ancestor,  "The  Old  One  "of 
Marco  Polo's  Travels,  in  the  fortress  of  Alamut  in  Persia,  his  influence  at  Kar- 
bala  enabled  him  annually  to  procure,  through  a  private  channel,  selections  from 
the  best  blood-colts  of  the  Aeniza.  His  stable  management  was  a  curious  mixture 
of  the  Persian  and  the  Newmarket  systems ;  but  the  horses  were  so  superior 
that  an  uncommon  power  of  winning  races  was  accounted  among  the  miraculous 
sifts  of  the  "Old  Man  of  the  Mountain."  ^ 

1   V.  art.  AlamDt,  in  Ind.  I. 


270  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

Both  Mr  Blunt  and  Major  Upton  chose  their  stud  Arabians  from  the  stocks 
which  drink  of  the  Euphrates.  Several  of  tlie  animals  selected  by  the  latter  were 
sent  to  New  South  Wales.  According  to  an  advertisement  sheet  now  before  us, 
dated  i8S8,  from  Rochester,  New  York,  one  of  them  became  the  prima  donna 
of  a  breeding  establishment  in  the  New  World.  We  all  know  that  Mr  Blunt's 
favourites,  notwithstanding  the  collapse  of  Arab  racing  at  Newmarket,  continue  to 
multiply  in  Sussex. 

Many  years  before  the  Crabbet  Park  stud  was  formed,  a  merchant  of  Bombay 
took  to  England  a  genuine  Arab  horse  named  Venus.  This  may  seem  a  strange 
name  for  a  horse ;  but  the  explanation  is  that  his  importer,  a  not  too  reverent  A  jami, 
or  Persian,  called  him  after  the  Prophet  Yu-nus,  out  of  which  "  Venus  "  was  evolved 
by  the  Secretary  of  the  Turf  Club.  We  never  saw  this  modern  "Bay  Arabian" 
during  his  stud  career  in  our  island,  and  do  not  know  what  chances  were  allowed 
him  ;  but  he  was  a  true-made  one.  He  belonged  to  the  horse,  not  the  Galloway, 
series  ;  and  the  only  fault  which  the  most  critical  judges  could  find  in  him — over- 
slackness  at  the  couples — did  not  prevent  him  from  carrying  ten  stone  to  victory, 
on  at  least  one  occasion,  in  a  two-mile  contest.  We  have  lately  had  the  good 
fortune  to  find  evidence  that  Venus  and  the  Darley,  with  an  interval  of  about  a 
century  and  a  half  between  them,  passed  in  the  same  deserts,  and  out  of  the  hands 
of  the  same  nation,  from  nomad  to  ha-dha-d  ownership.  Since  beginning  this 
chapter,  we  have  lost  the  chance  of  purchasing  a  four-year-old  colt  of  the  same 
strain  as  Venus  in  the  followino-  of  a  Shekh  of  the  Sba'.  While  we  were  offerinsf 
money,  a  messenger  from  the  Mun-ta-fik  bought  him  with  thirty  camels.^  In  the 
same  desert  _;^55  and  three  riding-camels  were  offered  for  another  colt,  to  the  dire 
offence  of  his  breeder.  These  experiences  show  what  considerable  prices  are  often 
demanded  by  the  Bedouin  of  Sha-mi-ya.  In  every  country  a  good  horse,  or  one 
which  from  his  breeding  is  likely  to  prove  such,  excites  competition. 

We  have  only  space  to  notice  here  two  of  the  many  approved  Arabians  which 
Euphrates  land  has  more  recently  yielded. 

About  twenty  years  ago,  Esau  bin  Curtas,  of  Bussorah,  bought  a  large  bay  colt 
from  the  Bedouin  of  Sha-mt-ya.  He  first  offered  him  to  the  Government  of  India; 
but  his  fore-legs  were  pronounced  unsatisfactory.  Ultimately  the  colt  was  sold, 
for  Rs.  10,000,  to  one  of  our  countrymen,  in  whose  hands  he  became  the  conquer- 
ing Revenge.^ 


'^  In  Arabia  the  purchasing  power  of  camels  so 
varies  in  different  years,  at  different  seasons,  and  in 
different  locahties,  that  it  is  impossible  to  express  a 
given  number  of  them  in  £  s.  d.  He  who  works  with 
a  camel  currency  quickly  reahses  the  first  principle 
of  commerce,  that  what  is  called  money  bears  a  very 


indeterminate  value. 

^  Not  to  be  confounded  with  his  namesake  of  later 
date.  Young  Revenge,  of  whom  we  have  failed  to  dis- 
cover whether  he  came  from  Najd,  Sha-mi-ya,  or  Al 
Ja-zi-ra. 


CHAP.  m.         THE  ARABIAN  IN  SHA-MI-YA    AND   AL    JA-Zl-RA. 


271 


Our  second  instance  will  also  be  taken  from  India,  where  the  running  of  the 
bay  Arab  horse  Euphrates  is  still  remembered.  Euphrates  was  one  of  the  most 
commanding  Arabs  that  have  ever  appeared,  and  he  was  taller  even  than  the  Darley. 
His  exporter,  A'lt  bin  Khu-dhai-ri,  whose  home  is  in  Baghdad,  bought  him  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Aleppo,  from  the  Aeniza.  Some  of  our  readers  may  have 
seen  Euphrates  cut  down  his  fields  like  a  second  Eclipse.  There  is  a  laudable 
tendency  in  Englishmen  to  claim  for  old  England  everything  that  is  very  superior. 
As  often  as  a  "Triton  of  the  minnows"  like  Revenge  and  Euphrates  comes  out 
in  India,  many  who  should  know  better  assert  that  he  is  partly  English.  The 
point  to  observe  is,  that  nothing  would  induce  the  breeders  of  the  pure  Arabian  to 
use  an  English  stallion,  even  if  the  opportunity  of  doing  so  existed.  A  brother 
of  the  Shekh  of  the  Ma-sa-ri-ba  division  of  the  Sba'  Aeniza  married  an  English- 
woman,  with  whom  he  is  said  to  live  in  much  happiness,  at  certain  seasons  of 
the  year  in  a  Damascus  chateau,  and  at  others  in  tents  in  the  desert.  Lady  A. 
Blunt  states  that  the  Ma-sa-ri-ba  take  advantage  of  this  connection  for  the  im- 
portation  of  guns,  revolvers,  and  ammunition  ;  ^  and  some  may  think  it  probable 
that  English  stallions  also  reach  them  through  the  same  channel.  Perhaps  this 
might  be  so  if  anybody  were  to  convince  them  that  mixed  blood  would  prove  as 
superior  to  pure  blood  in  Al  ghaz-u  as  carbines  do  to  lances  ;  but  experience  has 
fortified  them  against  such  an  idea.  Many  of  the  finest  Ku-hai-lans,  especially  those 
of  the  bay  colour,  more  or  less  resemble  Newmarket  three-year-olds ;  but  the 
relationship  between  the  two  varieties  explains  this,  taken  in  connection  with  the 
fact  that  both  alike  are  bred  for  galloping.  In  the  same  way,  the  type  of  remote 
oriental  ancestors  is  occasionally  reproduced  in  our  blood-horses — for  example,  in 
Touchstone,  and  his  very  Arab-like  son  Motley. 

We  now  come  to  the  important  feature  of  Sha-mi-ya  and  Al  Ja-zi-ra — that  is  to 
say,  the  endless  series  of  adulterated  breeds  of  horses,  more  or  less  founded  on  Arab 
blood,  which  they  contain.  There  should  be  no  blind  buying  of  horses  anywhere, 
and  least  of  all  towards  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates.  History  narrates  how  the  coun- 
try between  El  I'rak  and  Egypt  has  from  time  immemorial  formed  one  of  the  world's 
caravan  routes  and  battle-fields.  When  it  received  the  Aeniza  and  the  Shammar,  it 
was  already  tenanted  not  only  by  many  nations  of  Arabs,  such  as  the  Ba-nu  Sakhr 
and  Ma-wa-li,  now  called  collectively  Ahlu  'sk  Shi-mdl,  or  Northerners^^  but  also  by 
multitudes  of  other  kindreds.  In  Burckhardt's  time,  hordes  of  Turku-mans  were 
prominent  elements  in  its  population.^  Nearer  our  day,  a  British  remount  officer 
explored  the  Aeniza   encampments   round    Damascus,  and  wrote  in   '  Blackwood's 


^   V.  op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  12,  vol.  i.  p.  10. 

-  To  distinguish   them  from  the   Aeniza,  who  are 


spoken  of  as  A'rabu  V  Kib-li,  or  Southerners. 

^  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  15,  vol.  i.  p.  12,  et passim. 


2/2 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK  IV. 


Magazine '  a  delightfully  matter-of-fact  account  of  his  adventures.      His  reference 
to  the  Turku-mans  is  as  follows  : — - 

"  Besides  the  Arabs,  there  was  another  race  whose  tents  might  be  found  in  our  neighbour- 
hood ;  the  wandering  Turcomans,  a  nomadic  people  very  similar,  both  in  manner  of  life  and  in 
dress,  to  the  sedentary  Arabs.  Their  history,  as  it  was  related  to  me,  is  this  :  They  belong  to 
the  great  Turcoman  race  from  which  the  Osmanlis  sprang,  and  which  still  exists  towards  the 
north  of  Persia.  Their  forefathers  came  into  Syria  to  help  to  resist  the  Crusaders,  and  have 
remained  there  ever  since  ;  and  the  language  which  they  to  this  day  speak  is  not,  as  with  the 
other  people  of  Syria,  Arabic,  but  Turkish. 

"  They  possess  camels,  goats,  cattle,  and  horses.  The  latter  are  very  poor.  They  are  not, 
I  think,  superior  in  height  to  the  Arab,  and  in  every  other  point  are  so  inferior  that,  seen  by  his 
side,  they  seem  fit  for  little  else  than  pack-horses.  They  are  heavy  and  clumsy,  with  coarse 
heads,  staring  coats,  very  drooping  hind-quarters,  legs  long  in  the  shank,  and  coarse,  draggling, 
ill-carried  tails.  In  temper  they  are  very  shy;  and  although  almost  all  geldings,  are  commonly 
obstinate  and  vicious  when  mounted.  The  mares,  by  reason  of  finer  coats  and  greater  age  (for 
both  Arabs  and  Turcomans  sell  their  horses  very  young),  are  better  looking,  but  are  still  coarse 
and  Flemish."  1 

The  Bedouin  Arabs  of  Najd,  when  they  overflowed  into  Sha-mt-ya  and  Al 
Ja-zt-ra,  neither  expelled  nor  subjugated  the  peoples  whom  they  found  there.  The 
spaces  were  ample,  and  the  new-comers  took  only  what  they  wanted.  Their  boast 
is  that  they  have  preserved  from  Shi-ma-li  admixture  ^  the  strains  of  horses  which 
they  brought  with  them  ;  but  this  account  exceeds  the  bounds  of  credibility.  In 
these  northern  pastures,  the  best  Najdi  blood  is  that  which  is  the  most  frequently 
revivified  by  fresh  supplies  from  Najd. 

The  granges  and  hamlets  on  the  Euphrates  produce  innumerable  horses  which 
it  would  be  an  abuse  of  language  to  call  Arabians. 

Where  the  Bi-likh  fertilises  north-western  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  the  Ba-ra-zi-ya,  as  we 
have  already  seen,^  drive  the  plough  and  raise  cattle.  These  are  not  Al  ghaz-u 
folk,  and  their  mares  are  mostly  Shi-ma-li.  They  are,  however,  skilful  horse- 
breeders,  and  they  have  access  to  the  stallions  of  the  Bedouin.  They  specially 
aim  at  breeding  large  horses.  A  considerable  number  of  charger-like  upstanding 
colts  of  all  shades  of  blood  are  annually  collected  from  them  by  the  Mosul  and 
Ur-fa  dealers.  When  a  horse  of  the  coarse  or  "carty"  stamp  appears  in  India,  and 
strides  away  by  sheer  force  of  bone  and  muscle  from  cleaner  bred  ones,  he  may  be 
the  product  of  these  pastures.  Horses  of  this  class  occasionally  make  a  coup,  but 
they  do  not  train  on.     There  is  no  instance  of  one  of  them  winning  races  in  his 


1  op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  20,  p.  273. 

^  Shi-ma-lJ  literally  means  northern,  or  north-west- 
ern. Here  it  denotes  the  horse  stock  which  existed 
on  the  Euphrates  before  the  coming  of  the  Aeniza  and 


the  Shammar.     The  term  ba-ri-da-tu  'I  jauf,  lit.  cold- 
hearted,  is  given  by  the   Bedouin  to  the  produce  of 
Shi-ma-li  mares  by  hu-dud,  i.e.  pure-bred,  stallions. 
2  V.  ante,  p.  75. 


CHAP.  III.  THE  ARABIAN  IN   SHA-MI-YA    AND   AL    JA-Zt-RA.  273- 

teens,  like  little  Greyleg.  The  old  story  of  "  English  Arabs  "  is  reproduced  in  connec- 
tion with  them,  but  it  is  wide  of  the  mark.  It  may  be  the  case  that  the  Ba-ra-zi-ya, 
unlike  the  Aeniza,  would  send  their  mares  to  any  large  horse  of  good  character  which 
might  come  their  way ;  but  they  could  neither  procure  an  English  sire  nor  take  care 
of  him  if  they  had  him.  One  summer  we  kept  an  Australian  thoroughbred  beside 
us  in  Baghdad.^  He  was  a  patient  gelding,  which  had  experienced  the  climate  of 
India,  and  he  had  a  cool  stable,  with  ample  attendance.  But  one  afternoon  in 
August  a  wasp  attacked  him.  Contrary  to  orders,  the  native  grooms  had  fastened 
him  with  head  and  heel  ropes,  to  keep  him  from  rubbing  himself  The  attachment 
of  the  head-rope  was  to  a  solid  square  of  wood  firmly  planted  in  the  stable  floor, 
and  that  of  the  heel-rojaes  to  an  iron  peg  ;  but  the  affrighted  animal  kicked  and 
plunged  till  both  pieces  started.  He  then  set  off  through  the  town,  with  his 
plucked-up  anchors  dangling  both  before  him  and  behind  him,  and  banging  him. 
When  he  was  brought  back,  the  blood  was  streaming  from  him,  and  it  was  several 
weeks  before  he  recovered.  Even  in  India,  European  horses  are  difficult  charges. 
One  of  the  best  that  ever  was  shipped  from  Cape  Colony,  Sir  Benjamin,  was  so 
excited  by  the  ordeal  of  being  taken  through  the  surf  at  Madras  in  a  native  boat, 
that  the  first  thincr  which  he  did  on  landing  was  to  "  knock  over  a  black  fellow."  ^ 
A  high  veterinary  authority  declared  that  he  was  mad,  and  recommended,  for  the 
sake  of  the  public  safety,  that  he  should  be  destroyed.  We  once  saw  two  superb 
English  hunters  arrive  in  the  capital  of  a  Hindu  State  in  Rajputana.  A  young 
Rajput  was  ordered  to  mount  one  of  them  ;  and  he  had  no  sooner  done  so 
than  the  noble  quadruped,  with  a  slight  lift  of  his  hind-quarters,  sent  the  youngster 
rolling  down  the  road  like  a  cricket-ball. 

When  a  medical  man  writes  us  a  prescription  consisting  of  half-a-dozen 
ingredients,  nobody  can  venture  to  say  which  of  them  is  the  one  that  shall  cure 
us.  And  in  the  same  way  the  Shi-ma-li  horse  stock  of  Sha-mi-ya  and  Al 
Ja-zi-ra  is  so  curiously  compounded,  that  it  is  impossible  to  give  an  exact  account 
of  it.  One  of  its  elements  is  the  deteriorated  Turku-ma-ni  mass,  which  is  de- 
scribed in  the  above  extract  from  '  Blackwood.'  There  is  evidence  to  show 
that  blood  relationship  exists  between  the  Turku-ma-ni  horse  which  is  bred  to 
the  east  of  the  Caspian  and  the  Ku-hai-lan  of  the  Arabs.  One  of  the  good 
deeds  of  A'b-bas  I.  of  Persia,  whose  dominions  at  his  death  (1628)  stretched  from 
the  Tigris  to  the  Indus,  was  to  collect  and  distribute  a  large  number  of  Arabian 
mares  and  stallions.  The  new  breed  thus  founded  was  well  cared  for  by  the 
northern  nomadic  Kurds,  and  it  flourished  greatly  in  certain  localities  which 
now  belong  to    Russia.      We  have  heard   it  stated   by   those  who  know  "  Turk- 

1   V.  ante,  pp.  195  et  iii,i.  \       -  Op.  at.  in  Catalog.  No.  26  (Aug.  1S57),  p.  iiS. 

2  M 


274 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK  IV. 


menia,"  that  the  best  variety  of  the  Turku-ma-ni  horse,  that  known  in  Central 
Asia  as  the  Argamak,  essentially  is  a  modified  Arabian.  Our  first  introduc- 
tion to  the  Argamak  occurred  in  India.  At  Hyderabad,  in  the  Deccan,  a 
bay  horse  was  offered  to  Sir  Salar  Jung  at  an  enormous  price  by  a  Hirl.ti 
dealer,  who  said  that  he  had  brought  him  from  the  steppe  -  land  north  of 
Khurasan  and  Afghanistan.  It  so  happened  that  a  couple  of  years  previously 
we  had  received  from  Sydney  a  thoroughbred  Waler,  the  grandsire  of  which 
was  an  Arab,  and  finding  him  unsound,  had  sold  him  by  auction.  Sir  Salar 
Jung  had  often  seen  him,  and  when  the  Turku-ma-ni  horse  was  taken  to  him 
he  sent  him  to  us,  with  a  letter  asking  if  he  was  not  our  late  property.  And 
really  the  two  were  so  similar  that  it  was  difficult  to  distinguish  them,  except 
from  the  Waler  beinof  a  oreldinsf  and  the  other  a  horse.  Afterwards,  in  Afghan- 
istan,  we  saw  many  Argamaks  of  the  same  Anglo-Arabian  stamp, — not  at  Cabul, 
whence  the  true  sabreurs  had  fled,  but  at  Jalal-a-bad,  in  the  possession  of  Sher 
A'li's  governor.^  Pilgrims  and  other  travellers  from  kingdoms  as  distant  as  Bukhara 
frequently  pace  over  the  routes  of  Sha-mi-ya  and  Al  Ja-zi-ra  on  Turku-ma-ni 
horses.  The  best  specimens  which  have  come  our  way  have  been  long,  and  if 
anything  rather  narrow,  animals,  with  straight  back  and  croup  ;  long,  fine,  and 
well-raised  neck;  head  "dry,"  as  the  Russians  say — that  is,  bony  and  fleshless — 
and  the  eyes  as  lively  as  a  game-cock's.  Bay,  grey,  and  dark  brown  are  the 
established  colours.  As  a  rule,  these  horses  are  of  greater  height  and  scope 
than  Arabs.  Their  fore-legs  are  of  the  "  brass-wire  "  kind,  and  the  fore  pasterns 
incline  to  be  too  long  and  straight. 

We  have  thus  dwelt  on  the  subject  of  Turku-ma-ni  horses,  partly  because 
the  breed  is  an  interesting  one,  and  partly  in  connection  with  the  well-attested 
and  evident  fact,  above  alluded  to,  of  this  blood,  in  a  debased  form,  being  spread 
over  Sha-mi-ya  and  Al  Ja-zi-ra.  In  a  batch  of  horses  which  lately  reached  us 
from  the  Aleppo  quarter,  a  dark  bay  colt  with  black  points  greatly  took  the  eye. 
Although  only  two  off,  he  stood  14  hands  3  inches,  and  was  long,  low,  and  level. 
His  head  was  not  good.      It  appears  in  the  illustration  on  p.  140,  where  it  is  used 


1  A  son  of  the  historical  Amir  Dost  Muhammad 
Khan  of  Cabul,  resided  till  he  died  at  Baghdad.  He 
has  often  told  us  that,  according-  to  his  experience, 
the  Argamak  is  even  a  better  traveller  and  cam- 
paigner than  the  Arabian.  His  view  was  that  as  no 
sane  person  will  sell  a  proved  good  horse  unless  he 
has  turned  useless,  the  only  way  to  obtain  a  sound 
and  genuine  Argamak  is  to  buy  him  as  a  yearling 
from  the  nomads.  Russian  posts  are  now  estab- 
lished in  the  country  of  the  Akhal  Tekkes — i.e.,  in 


"  Turkmenia,"  as  distinct  froiB  Turkistan.  Probably 
either  Yeok  Tepe  or  Ask-abad  would  be  the  best 
centre  to  work  from  if  one  desired  to  buy  Argamaks. 
But  it  would  be  necessary  to  go  in  person,  as  Count 
de  IVIailling  did  about  fifteen  years  ago.  An  agent 
would  bring  back  animals  which  he  had  bought  from 
peasants  ;  or  perhaps  half-wild  Kirghiz  Galloways, 
the  hardy  creatures  with  the  aid  of  which  Kokand, 
Bokhara,  and  Khiva  have  lately  been  "  civilised "  by 
Russia. 


CHAP.  III.  THE  ARABIAN  IN  SHA-MI-YA    AND  AL    JA-Zl-RA. 


27s 


as  a  block  on  which  to  exhibit  the  Bedouin  bridle.      His  length  from  hip  to  hock 
was  extraordinary,  but  the  quarters  were  as  close  and  narrow  as  if  they  had  been 
pressed  together.      When  roused,  he  was  a  dashing  galloper,  but  he  was  a  slug  at 
all  other  paces.     The  man  who  exercised  him  called  him  Al  kd-ruk,  or  The  cradle} 
from  his  ponderous  rocking  motion  at  the   walk.      His   manners  raised  a  strong 
suspicion  that  he  was  not  a  true  Arabian.     The  desert  colt  carries  his  feeding-bag 
with    him,  and  knows  that  if  he    would    reach    his   halting-place   he  must    march 
straight    ahead.       "Sticking   up"    under    the   saddle    and    all    the    other  signs  of 
stubbornness    indicate   town    breeding.      This  one,  if  Balaam's  ass  had   been  his 
grandfather,  could   scarcely  have   had  a  more   inveterate  habit   of  stopping  when 
the  humour  seized  him,  standing  like  a  statue,  and  resisting  every  intimation  to 
proceed.      The  usual   excuses  were  made    for  these   symptoms   of  worthlessness. 
It  was  thought  that  time   and  work  would    perhaps  develop    Bedouin   manners. 
Eclipse,   when   he  was  a  colt,   was   so  full  of  vagaries  that  they  thought  of  cas- 
trating him ;  and  it  was  only  through  his  being  hacked  about  all  day  by  an  Epsom 
rough-rider,    who    often    kept    him   out   all   night,    that  his    strong   character   was 
mastered.      Bumble's  theory  that  ,"  meat   will   raise  an  artificial  soul  and  spirit," 
was  perhaps   in  this  case  applicable,  for  truly  a  boy's,  or  a  colt's,  worst  enemies 
are  idleness  and   over-feeding.      At  all   events,  it  was   decided  to  keep  the  colt, 
in   the  hope    that   he  would  improve.       In    Baghdad   it   is   difficult  to   do  justice 
to  young  horses.      In  winter  the  desert  is  soaked  with  rain,  and   in  summer  its 
surface  resembles  brick-work.     As  has  elsewhere  been  noticed,  there  is  also  con- 
stant trouble  about  shoeing.     A  civilised   riding-boy  can   scarcely  be  made  from 
the  existing    materials ;    and    practised   lads   are    unwilling    to    leave    India    for   a 
country  in  which  there  are   no  race-meetings.      The  sight  of  a  rising  colt  being 
hauled   about   by  a  Turk  or  Arab  who   holds  on  by  the  bridle,  and  whose  seat 
is  wherever  he  can  find  it,  is  as  painful  to  a  horseman  as  that  of  an  Errard's  harp 
in   the  hands  of  a  kitchen-maid  would  be  to  a  musician.      It  so   befell,  however, 
that  the  best  thing  which  can  happen  to  any  horse  happened  to  this  one  ;  that  is, 
in  his  third  and  fourth  years  he  saw  less  of  his  stable  than  of  desert  marching.     The 
practice  of  making  horses  which  are  intended  for  contests  of  speed  cover  lono-  dis- 
tances of  ground  every  day,  like  mere  baggage  animals,  is  not  perhaps   the  best 
promotive  of  racing  form  ;  but  it  is  an  excellent  discipline  and  preparation.      In  this 
instance  it  worked  wonders.     The  colt  grew  as   muscular  as  a  prize-fighter;   and 
after  a  time  it  seemed  that  he  had  learned  the  lesson  of  obedience.      But  event- 


1  In  the  classical  Arabic,  the  place  in  which  the  babe 
is  first  laid  is  called  inahd — lit.  a  flat  surface.  The 
swinging  cj-adle  is  a  town  invention,  and  the  word 


for  it,  ka-ruk,  is  apparently  of  the  same  coinage  as 
creak,  croak,  crack,  &c. 


276  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

ually  he  yielded  another  illustration  of  the  words  of  Sa'-di,  that  no  one  can  make 
a  good  sword  out  of  bad  metal ;  and  that  careful  tipdringing,  in  the  case  of  the 
worthless,  is  like  a  walnut  on  a  dome ;  or,  as  our  proverb  runs,  water  on  a  ducks 
back.  He  was  trained  in  India  as  a  five-year-old,  under  every  advantage  ;  but 
the  more  he  was  galloped,  the  more  he  resembled  a  ka-dish.  It  was  afterwards 
ascertained  that  he  came  from  a  village  near  Aleppo,  and  that  his  dam  was  not  an 
Arabian,  but  a  Turku-ma-nt  mongrel.  Some  say  that  according  to  the  contour  of 
the  head  in  foalhood  will  be  the  mature  horse's  outward  form  ;  and  we  are  inclined 
to  think  that  every  youngling,  whatever  its  early  promise  may  be,  will  the  more 
confess  its  orio-in  the  older  it  gfrows. 


277 


CHAPTER    IV. 

THE    ARABIAN    IN    EL    I'RAK    AND    EAST    THE    TIGRIS. 

THE  general  features  of  I'rak  A'ra-bi  have  been  elsewhere  shown.^  Every 
reader  knows  the  importance  of  this  region  to  investigators,  owing  to  the 
antiquity  of  its  annals,-  especially  those  tablets  of  burnt  clay  which  are  excavated 
and  deciphered  by  Assyriologists.  The  first  Semitic  settlers  among  its  primitive 
population  are  believed  to  have  come  as  traders.  The  career  of  these  people, 
under  their  historic  name  of  Assyrians,  is  compared  by  Professor  Sayce  with  the 
development  of  the  British  power  in  India.^  The  disappearance  in  due  time 
(b.c.  539)  of  Nebuchadnezzar's  empire  before  an  invasion  of  Aryans  led  by  Cyrus, 
is  among  the  outstanding  facts  of  history.  A  thousand  years  afterwards.  El  I'rak 
received  another  irruption  of  Semites.  This  time  they  were  Arabs,  and  the  spirit 
which  moved  them  was  national  and  religious.  Islam  had  set  out  to  conquer, 
and  these  were  its  soldiers.  At  that  period  the  western  limits  of  Persia  included 
the  ancient  Parthian  capital  of  Ctesiphon  on  the  Tigris,  about  twenty-five  miles 
below  modern  Baghdad.  Ctesiphon  had  suffered  with  varying  fortunes  many 
attacks  by  Roman  emperors  and  others  ;  but  in  a.d.  637  it  surrendered  to  Sa-a'd, 
the  Arabian  general.  After  that  the  political  centre  of  Islam  gradually  shifted 
from  El  Hi-jaz  to  El  I'rak.  The  "Eastern  Caliphate"  lasted  626  years  from 
the  death  of  Muhammad.  In  a.d.  1258  Hulagu  and  his  Mongols  extinguished 
it.      From  that   date   to   ours,   Tatars,    Turks,   and    Persians  have    kept    wresting 


1  V.  ante,  pp.  78-86.  I     logical,   "  tends  to  show  that  the  age   of  tlie   great 

-  Even    supposing    the    calculation    which     fixes     |     rivers  must  be  carried  back  to  a  date  earlier  than 


Adam's  date  no  further  back  than  B.C.  4004  to  be  ac- 
cepted, the  references  in  Genesis  to  Phrat  and  "  Hid- 
dekel" — i.e.,  the  Euphrates  and  the  Tigris — as  coeval 
with  Eden,  assert  for  the  present  Babylonian  plain 
an  antiquity  of  6000  years.  But  according  to  Pro- 
fessor Huxley,  "  another  kind  of  evidence,"  sc.   geo- 


that  at  which  our  ingenuous  youth  is  instructed  that 
the  earth  carne  into  e.xistence  : "  v.  "  Hasisadra's  Ad- 
venture," in  Nineteenth  Cetitury,  June  1891. 

^  In  art.   "  Babylonia,"  in  Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  iii.   p. 
192. 


278  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

from  one  another  the  mastery  of  the  Tigris.  To-day,  as  all  the  world  knows, 
the  ball  is  with  the  Turk,  as  it  has  been  for  the  last  250  years;  but  there  is  no 
saying  when  it  may  be  turned  in  a  new  direction.  "Sublime  Porte"  is  even  a 
more  complex  expression  than  "  Government  of  India."  The  motive-power  on 
the  Bosphorus  resides  in  cliques  of  inflated  Secretaries  and  "  advisers  "  ;  but  the 
Sultan's  personality  also  constitutes  a  factor  as  formidable  as  it  is  uncertain.  The 
political  conditions  of  El  I'rak  of  course  take  their  colour  from  those  of  Constanti- 
nople. Fifty  years  ago  the  Pasha  of  Baghdad  was  a  kind  of  sovereign.  When  the 
Porte  desired  to  oust  him,  a  force  had  sometimes  to  be  sent  to  accomplish  that 
object.  In  our  day  his  enemies  undermine  him,  and  his  masters  displace  him,  by 
telegraph.  A  bad  system  is  administered  by  a  worse  executive ;  he  who  has  place 
or  money  has  nothing  to  fear  save  its  being  taken  from  him ;  while  the  poor  have 
only  their  poverty  to  protect  them.  The  Porte  does  not  depute  its  best  officials  to 
provinces  which  are  considered  places  of  banishment. 

After  the  above  rapid  sketch,  but  slight  explanation  is  needed  of  the  disadvan- 
tages which  press  on  the  urban  and  rural  population  of  El  I'rak  as  horse-breeders. 
There  is  no  want  of  inclination  ;  the  commercial  incentive  is  considerable  ;  and  the 
country,  as  has  been  seen,  affords  rare  natural  facilities.  Wherever  the  Tigris,  the 
Euphrates,  or  the  Dhi-a-la  passes,  or  irrigational  channels  run,  the  man  who  ploughs 
but  an  acre  turns  out  a  hobbled  mare.  The  upas-tree  is  the  Government.  Agri- 
cultural shows  and  horse-fairs  are  impossible ;  for  the  Pasha  who  should  start  them 
would  be  credited  with  the  intention  of  annexing,  for  himself  or  for  the  military  de- 
partment, all  the  exhibits.  The  practice  of  periodically  prohibiting  the  export  of 
horses  harasses  numerous  classes.  It  turns  honest  merchants  into  smugglers.  The 
public  treasury  loses  its  custom's  dues  on  exported  horses.  The  young  stock  of  the 
country  is  hurried  out  of  it  without  the  wealthy  classes  having  had  an  opportunity 
of  buying  it. 

All  of  us  are  familiar  with  the  story  of  a  colossal  structure  having  once  upon  a 
time  been  begun  at  Bab-il,  or  Babel,  on  the  plains  of  El  I'rak.  It  is  not  clear  whether 
some  catastrophal  incident  of  the  prehistoric  world  makes  its  appearance  in  this 
description  ;  or  whether  the  purpose  of  the  writer  merely  was  to  bring  the  existing 
diversity  of  human  speech  into  agreement  with  the  fragment  imbedded  in  the  same 
writing,^  to  the  effect  that  "  the  whole  earth  was  of  one  language  and  of  one  speech," 
at  an  antecedent  period.  But  however  this  may  be,  if  a  tower  and  city  fallen  to  wreck 
and  ruin  were  used  to  typify  the  character  of  the  I'raki  horse-stock,  it  might  not  be 
inappropriate.  It  has  already  been  stated  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  so-called 
Arabians  which  appear  in  foreign  markets  are  produced  in  El  I'rak.      A  competent 

'  Gen.  xi. 


CHAP.  IV.      THE  ARABIAN  IN  EL  I'RAK  AND  EAST   THE    TIGRIS. 


279 


judge  of  horses  has  recorded  that,  in  the  course  of  his  professional  career  in  India,  he 
had  "scarcely  seen,"  in  the  Arab  breed,  "the  perfectly  formed  symmetrical  creature 
that  is  to  be  found  in  her  Majesty's  possession  at  home."  ^  It  is  not  surprising  that 
he  should  have  formed  this  conclusion.  The  case  of  the  Arabian  is  not  the  only  one 
in  which  the  genuine  article  suffers  in  reputation  through  counterfeits  being  mistaken 
for  it.  Sometimes,  in  El  I'rak,  when  a  home-bred  colt  is  being  shown,  the  owner 
says  that  a  ghaz-u  of  the  Bedouin  left  it  with  him  as  an  unweaned  foal,  because  its 
dam  had  been  taken  from  them  in  foray.  Such  a  tale  is  not  impossible.  The  in- 
tending purchaser  need  not  receive  it  with  a  face  of  incredulity,  but  he  should  be 
sceptical.  In  the  rare  instances  in  which  the  account  is  true,  a  pertinent  question  is, 
What  effect  does  the  "  water  and  air  "  of  El  I'rak  produce  on  younglings  which,  after 
having  been  foaled  say  in  Najd,  are  thus  expatriated  ?  but  facts  bearing  on  this  point 
are  wanting.  Occasionally  a  governor  or  a  military  commander  brings  to  El  I'rak 
from  Arabia  proper  a  notable  Ku-hai-lan,  and  lets  the  breeders  use  him.  The  result 
is,  the  appearance  of  superior  stock  round  his  headquarters  for  many  years  afterwards. 
Gradually,  however,  the  stamp  dies  out,  and  the  long  backs  and  coarseness  again 
prevail.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  fix  a  type  of  the  I'rakt  horse.  They  say  of 
Scotland  that  all  its  people  get  a  sip  of  learning,  and  none  of  them  a  full  draught. 
And  so  in  the  Tigris  valley,  every  horse  has  more  or  less  of  blood  or  breeding,  and 
no  horse  the  full  quantity.  The  only  comprehensive  description  applicable  is,  that 
they  are  all  saddle-horses.  Those  that  are  bred  in  towns  like  Baghdad  have  no 
true  pedigrees.  Light-framed  colts  grow  up  weedy,  more  like  slices  of  horses  than 
horses.  Bulky  colts  turn  out  coarse  and  beefy,  with  "  pig's  eyes  " — which  the  Arabs, 
by  the  way,  call  "locusts'  eyes" — a  thick  skin,  a  throaty  jowl,  and  a  neck  entering 
the  chest  below  the  shoulder  points.  A  touch  of  the  comical  is  often  imparted  to 
these  soft  town  products,  through  the  fashion  of  keeping  the  tail  close-clipped,  or 
shaven,  during  colthood,  to  promote  the  growth  of  the  hinder  parts !  Sad  to  relate, 
they  are  very  generally  suffered  to  be  fruitful  and  multiply.  Owing  to  this  cause,  and 
through  over-feeding,  their  manners  resemble  those  of  Persian  horses.  From  not 
being  shut  up,  they  are  seldom  pugnacious  in  company  ;  but  most  of  them  possess  a 
trick  of  neighing  till  their  sides  shake  when  they  see  a  mare.  No  amount  of  cudgel- 
ling will  serve  to  conquer  this  habit.  The  more  they  are  belaboured  the  more  they 
squeal,  especially  when  they  breathe  the  air  of  the  desert.  The  only  alternative  is, 
to  bear  with  the  noise  that  they  make,  or  to  castrate  them.  Many  oriental  peoples 
entertain  a  prejudice  against  castration.  This  question  is  still  a  more  or  less  open 
one ;  but  having  for  thirty  years  advocated  the  emasculation  of  horses  not  required 


1  A  Glimpse  at  Horse-breeding,  by  Principal  Vet. 
Surg.  F.  F.  Collins  ;  read  before  the  United  Services 


Institution  of  India,  20th  August  1878. 


28o  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

and  not  suited  for  propagation,  especially  cavalry  and  artillery  cattle,  we  may  as 
well  record  that  the  only  cases  in  which  we  have  known  the  patient  to  be 
lowered  in  strength  or  useful  courage  by  this  operation  are  those  in  which  it  has 
been  badly  performed,  or  resorted  to  in  animals  that  were  too  old,  or  were  other- 
wise disqualified.  It  is  not  impossible  that,  especially  in  the  coarser  breeds,  there 
are  horses  which,  if  unsexed,  will  lose  a  portion  of  their  natural  briskness  ;  but  after 
all  that  can  be  said,  it  is  certain  that  agricultural  communities  which  tie  up  their 
yearling  colts  labour  under  a  great  disadvantage,  when  compared  with  others  who 
castrate  them  and  turn  them  out.  A  slight  practical  lead  in  the  latter  direction  is 
being  given  in  El  I'rak  by  the  Osmanli.  Mounted  soldiers  naturally  prefer  geldings, 
to  screamers  which  they  may  have  to  rise  and  mind  several  times  in  the  course  of  a 
night  If  they  would  find  them  in  the  morning.  Besides  its  military  farriers,  Baghdad 
possesses  at  least  one  private  practitioner  of  this  useful  art — who,  although  but  a 
cobbler,  is  a  very  skilful  operator.  First,  he  casts  the  patient,  partly  with  a  hobble 
improvised  from  any  odd  piece  of  rope,  and  partly  by  pressure  against  the  but- 
tocks. After  that,  an  old  penknife,  with  a  couple  of  twigs  from  the  nearest  tree 
and  a  few  inches  of  twine  for  clams,  sees  him  through  the  business.  A  pinch  of 
sulphate  of  copper  is  then  rubbed  in,  and  the  moment  that  the  animal  rises,  as  well 
as  twice  a-day  afterwards,  he  is  mounted  and  cantered  round  the  stable-yard,  to 
keep  the  wound  from  swelling.  Only  a  drop  of  blood  escapes.  In  eight  years  we 
have  never  heard  of  any  of  this  man's  cases  going  on  otherwise  than  favourably. 
Occasionally  he  travels  as  far  from  home  as  the  Euphrates,  but  his  special  quali- 
fications are  not  utilised,  except  on  mules,  by  any  Arabs.  The  substance  of  this 
digression  Is,  that  the  first  thing  wanted  for  the  town-bred  horse-stock  of  the  country 
of  the  Tig-rls  is  castration. 

In  El  I'rak,  as  in  other  places,  the  further  we  recede  from  cities,  the  more 
the  horse  improves.  Thus  the  horse  of  the  mixed  pastoral  and  cultivating 
Arabs  of  AI  Ha-wi-ja  serves  as  a  useful  substitute  for  the  genuine  Arabian,  when 
only  a  small  price  can  be  given.  The  U'baid,  his  breeders,  have  barley ;  and 
many  of  their  colts  touch  15  hands  and  upwards.  Good  specimens,  when  not  too 
suggestive  of  the  gun  wheel,  after  a  month  of  town  polish,  pass  with  the  inexperi- 
enced for  Arabians  of  the  picture-book  type.  Once  at  Kar-kuk  we  bought  one  of 
this  class  for  ;^i5.  Though  only  a  four-year-old,  he  was  already  grown  into  a 
weight-carrying  charger,  with  good  trotting  action.  For  a  long  time  he  had  been  at 
grass,  and  yet  he  carried  us,  in  nearly  a  month  of  daily  marching,  over  a  most  rugged 
country,  without  ever  having  a  sore  back  or  making  a  bad  stumble.  If  he  had 
been  true-bred,  instead  of  but  a  happy  blend,  he  would  have  been  very  valuable. 
As  it  was,  the  dealer  who  bought  him  when  our  journey  was  over,  sold  him  in 
Bombay  to  a  racing  confederacy  for  about  twelve  times  his  Kar-kuk  price !     One 


CHAP.  IV.      THE  ARABIAN  IN  EL   FRAK  AND  EAST   THE    TIGRIS. 


281 


might  as  well  take  a  horse  out  of  the  first  passing  Oxford  Street  omnibus  and  enter 
him  for  the  Grand  National,  as  put  one  of  his  kind  in  training.  In  another  place  it 
was  stated  that  the  Sa-yih  families  of  the  Sham-mar  now  pitch  their  tents  in  Al 
Ha-wi-ja,  owing  to  feuds  with  their  kindred  between  the  two  great  rivers.  The 
Sa-yih  do  not  possess  more  than  about  a  thousand  mares.  These  are  generally 
undersized  ;  but  they  show  a  good  deal  of  type  and  quality.  The  local  dealers, 
when  they  cannot  just  say  that  they  obtained  a  horse  from  the  Aeniza,  are  fond  of 
tracing  him  to  the  Sa-yih.  A  pair  of  Galloways  from  this  quarter,  picked  up  for 
less  than  ;^20  each  in  the  open  lands  round  Tak-rit,  may  bring  Rs.  1500  in  Bombay, 
and  prove  well  worth  it  for  light  harness.  A  considerable  number  of  the  small 
blood  Arabs  which  are  so  much  sought  after  for  Indian  pony-racing  may  be  bought 
young,  for  very  moderate  prices  from  the  Sa-yih. 

Next  let  us  speak  of  the  Kurds  of  El  I'rak  and  their  horses.  Most  readers  know 
that  vast  mountain-ranges  shut  off  the  Porte's  Asiatic  provinces  from  Persia.  The 
several  masses,  as  they  ascend  and  descend  over  one  another,  from  the  junction 
of  the  two  arms  of  the  Euphrates,  by  Lake  Van,  to  Su-lai-ma-ni-ya,  present  a 
stupendous  picture  of  confusion.  Here  and  there  a  summit  rises,  white  with  snow, 
to  perhaps  even  15,000  feet.  But  the  usual  elevation  is  much  lower;  and  the 
mountain-slopes  and  undulating  uplands  are  clothed  in  summer  with  rich  herbage. 
Rivers  and  innumerable  streams  flow  through  the  landscapes  ;  a  temperate,  or  in 
winter  rigorous,  climate  hardens  the  people  for  labour ;  and  cereals  are  produced  in 
the  valleys  in  extraordinary  abundance.  A  very  great,  but  not  the  only,  element 
in  the  population  of  this  region  consists  of  Kurds.^  In  certain  localities  these 
are  claimed  by  Persia,  and  in  others  by  the  Porte ;  but,  as  far  as  possible,  they 
preserve  the  tribal  organisation.  Although  not  Persians  they  are  Aryans  ;  and  this 
appears  in  the  numerous  superstitions  with  which  they  variegate  Islamism.  Both  in 
Persia  and  Turkey  the  great  body  of  them  are  Sun-nis  ;  but  highly  as  they  esteem 
their  patriarchal  chiefs,  they  pay  even  greater  reverence  to  "holy  men"  or 
Sai-yids.^  In  this  respect  they  resemble  the  Afghans.  Six  words  of  the  Kur-an, 
detached  from  the  context  and  misinterpreted,  will  outweigh  with  them  every 
earthly  consideration,  subsidies  not  excepted  after  the  money  has  been  pocketed. 
The   Persian  and   Osmanli   Governments  are  greatly  troubled  by  them.      At  the 


^  At  the  dawn  of  history,  as  now,  a  nation  named 
Giitii  {warrior),  which  the  Assyrians  rendered  by  the 
synonym  of  Gardu  or  Kardu,  occupied  these  moun- 
tains ;  and  Cyrus  found  it  necessary  to  curb  them 
before  he  descended  upon  Babylon. 

^  The  greatest  personage  in  the  Kurdi  town  of 
Su-lai-mi-ni-ya,  where  this  footnote  is  added,  is  a 
certain  Ka-ka  Ah -mad,  of  patriarchal  age  but  not 


ascetic  habit,  to  kiss  whose  hand  thousands  of  people 
congregate.  As  he  receives  only  his  disciples,  it  is 
impossible  to  ascertain  his  tenets  ;  but  the  secret 
meetings  which  he  holds  are  probably  traceable  to 
times  before  Is-lam.  The  title  Kd-ka  means  elder 
brother.  The  word  reappears  in  India  as  cha-cha  = 
uncle.  In  Hungary,  the  leader  of  a  band  of  gipsies  is 
their  "  Ga-ka." 


2  N 


282 


THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME. 


BOOK  IV. 


present  time  the  country  crossed  by  the  Him-rin^  barrier,  through  which  the  Tigris 
the  U'dhaim,  and  the  Dhi-a-la  find  their  several  openings  into  the  Babylonian  plain, 
is  harassed  by  one  small  Kurdish  clan  called  the  Ha-ma-wands,  or  Ah-mad-a-wands. 
This  tribe  musters  no  more  than  five  hundred  fighting  men  ;  and  yet  it  keeps 
up  a  sharp,  if  unequal,  conflict  with  two  great  Governments,  which  are  supposed 
to  be  acting  in  concert,  sometimes  for  its  pacification,  and  at  other  times  for  its 
destruction.  We  lately  rode  a  march  with  a  Bey  of  the  Ha-ma-wands,  who  had 
made  terms  with  the  Turks  and  stopped  in  his  castle,  doubtless  to  watch  the 
authorities.  The  blood-mare  which  he  rode  looked  as  if  she  had  been  bred  in 
Najd.  He  and  his  retainers  exhibited  feats  of  horsemanship  in  the  most  rugged 
places  ;  and  their  expertness  in  loading  and  firing  their  Martinis  at  speed  explained 
the  difficulty  of  reducing  such  centaurs  to  obedience.  The  first  European  Power 
which  shall  acquire  a  cantonment  in  the  lands  inhabited  by  the  Kurds  should  find 
it  easy,  by  means  of  regular  pay  and  discipline  adapted  to  the  national  temper, 
to  raise  a  formidable  army.^  After  what  has  preceded,  it  is  superfluous  to  observe 
that  in  the  area  now  being  glanced  at,  which  is  roughly  calculated  at  60,000  square 
miles,  local  circumstances  strongly  conduce  to  horse-breeding.  The  nomadic  Kurds 
ride  mares,  not  camels,  and  love  to  be  well  mounted.  Their  settled  kindred  raise 
colts  for  sale  to  dealers,  and  rear  the  young  stock  cheaply.  The  drawback  is  want 
of  system,  and  the  scarcity  of  good  stallions.  Now,  as  in  the  time  of  the  Crusades, 
every  Kurd  assigns  the  highest  place  to  ancestry.  It  is  probable  that  certain  Kurd- 
ish families  which  still  flourish  can  each  show  a  pedigree  of  at  least  five  hundred 
years.  Nevertheless  the  practice  of  these  people  as  horse-breeders  seems  to  aim 
at  nothing  higher  than  the  obtaining  of  foals  out  of  such  mares  as  they  possess  by 
any  horses  which  may  strike  their  fancy.  Hence  it  is  wrong  to  assign  to  the  term 
"  Kurdi  horse"  any  other  meaning  than  that  of  a  horse  bred  by  the  Kurds.  In 
this  sense,  many  so-called  Arabian  horses  are  more  correctly  Kurdi  ones.  If 
Arab  blood  form  the  basis  of  the  Kurdish  horse-stock,  admixture  is  its  prevailing 
feature.  We  have  only  once  seen  in  El  Irak  a  horse  that  reminded  us  of  the 
thoroughbred,  or  nearly  thoroughbred,  weight-carriers  of  the  Shires.  This  was  an 
aged  grey  which  the  Baghdad  troops  had  taken  in  a  skirmish  with  the  Ha-ma-wands 
near  the  Persian  frontier.     Nobody  knew  his  history  except  his  owner,  whose  split 


^  The  Him-rin  range  leaves  the  main  series  of  the 
Zagros  near  Man-da-li,  and  runs  S.E.  to  N.W.,  to 
within  a  short  distance  of  the  ruins  of  Al  Hadhr  {q.  v. 
in  Index  I.)  Not  its  height,  which  rarely  exceeds 
500  feet,  but  its  length,  about  200  miles,  and  breadth 
make  this  rocky  barrier  formidable.  More  or  less 
elevated  ridges  of  sandstone  and  pebbles  run  parallel 
with  it,  enclosing  gorges  and  oases,  and  serving  as 


outer  defences  to  the  central  recesses. 

2  General  Sir  H.  C.  Rawlinson,  in  1882,  computed 
the  Kurds  under  Turkey  at  15,000,000,  and  those 
under  Persia  at  750,000. — {Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  xiv.  p. 
156.)  The  term  Kurd-istdn,  or  Kjird  country,  is  more 
convenient  than  scientific.  The  Kurds  are  distributed 
from  about  39  N.  lat.  and  39  E.  long,  to  about  34  N. 
lat.  and  47  E.  long. 


CHAP.  IV.       THE  ARABIAN  IN  EL  PRAK  AND  EAST   THE    TIGRIS.  283 

skull  had  swung  for  a  clay's  march  at  the  saddle-bow  of  an  Osmanli  Rustam.  After 
figuring  for  a  time  under  the  bulky  form  of  a  military  Pisha,  the  horse  was  sold 
for  the  stud  of  a  Persian  governor.  He  had  plenty  of  blood  for  himself;  but 
whether  he  had  enough  to  transmit  to  others  was  doubtful.  Probably  he  was  one 
of  those  with  respect  to  which  it  is  necessary,  in  order  to  breed  others  like  them, 
to  go  back  to  the  sire  and  dam. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  European  blood  has  ever  been  used  by  the  horse- 
breeders  of  El  I'rak.  The  case  might  easily  have  been  otherwise,  for  these  people 
are  very  different  from  the  Bedouin  Arabs.  St  Petersburg  imports  a  considerable 
number  of  English  horses,  the  progeny  of  which,  in  the  form  of  Russian  car- 
riage cattle,  may  be  seen  as  far  eastward  as  Kirmanshah  in  Persia,  only  ten  days' 
march  from  Baghdad.  If  a  Consul,  or  a  merchant,  residing  on  the  Tigris,  or  on 
the  Shattu  '1  A'rab,  were  to  bring  out  for  his  own  riding  a  foreign  stallion,  and 
the  natives  liked  him,  they  would  bribe  the  grooms  and  obtain  his  services.  But 
a  thing  may  be  possible,  or  even  probable,  and  yet  may  never  have  actually 
happened  ;  and  such  would  appear  to  be  the  case  in  this  instance.  An  Anglo- 
Arabian,  or  "  English-Arab,"  bred  on  the  Tigris,  is  still  in  the  future.  Supposing  a 
series  of  colts  of  this  description  to  begin  to  appear  in  the  Bombay  market,  it  is 
likely  that  the  local  Turf-Clubs  would  find  it  necessary  to  frame  a  new  rule,  with 
the  object  of  excluding  them  from  the  many  valuable  races  which  in  Western 
India  are  still  reserved  for  Arabs.  Even  in  moist  Bengal  the  produce  of  the  Eng- 
lish thoroughbred  horse,  not  always  from  the  best  mares,  has  often  given  weight 
and  a  beating  to  champion  Arabs. 

The  I'raki  cultivators  are  fully  aware  that  if  they  could  breed  better  horses 
they  would  obtain  better  prices  from  the  wandering  dealers  ;  but  there  is  no  one  to 
give  them  the  lead.  Their  mares  are  inferior,  but  they  are  better  than  the  horses 
to  which  they  are  sent.  The  so-called  Arab  horse-stock  of  El  I'rak  thus  dwindles 
more  and  more.  Signs  of  this  ajapear  in  the  prevailing  colours.  The  silver,  nut- 
meg, and  sky  -  blue  greys  of  the  desert  are  lost  on  the  Tigris  in  a  series  of 
debased  roans,  sorrels,  and  russets.  Chestnuts  turn  pale  or  washy,  and  put  on 
blazes  or  white  stockings.  Bay  to  a  great  extent  disappears.  While  residing  at 
Baghdad  we  have  obtained  from  the  Bedouin  horses  of  all  the  good  colours  ; 
but  no  breeder  has  ever  asked  for  the  services  of  one  of  them  which  was  not  a  bay. 
The  reason  of  this  is,  that  buyers  will  give  a  better  price  for  a  bay  I'raki  than  for  an 
I'raki  of  any  other  colour.  We  know  what  an  extraordinary  aptitude  England  pos- 
sesses for  changing  waste  lands  and  pastures  into  granaries  and  cities,  not  only  in 
the  British  Isles,  excepting  Ireland,  but  in  every  country  which  she  occupies.  The 
drawback  is  that  the  supply  of  horses  fit  for  military  purposes  decreases  in  like  pro- 
portion wherever  her  foot  is  planted,  so  that  it  becomes  necessary  to  look  abroad 


284  THE  ARABIAN  AT  HOME.  book  iv. 

for  remounts.  Naturally  El  I'rak,  owing  to  its  nearness  to  Bombay  and  Karachi, 
is  full  of  interest  from  this  point  of  view.  The  worst  I'raki  is  at  least  inured  to 
a  burning  sun  in  summer,  and  to  more  of  cold  and  wet  in  winter  than  he  will  ever 
see  in  India.  The  better  bred  ones,  especially  those  of  Kurds  like  the  Da-u-di-ya, 
abound  in  useful  qualities.  Very  commonly  they  grow  to  14  hands  and  2  inches 
at  the  withers.  They  are  good  marchers,  and  very  hardy,  and  have  strong  legs 
and  feet.  The  Kurd's  horse  never  refuses  to  thrust  his  head  into  his  feeding- 
bag,  no  matter  how  severe  a  day's  work  he  may  have  done.  A  large  number  of 
colts  which  more  or  less  answer  to  this  description  are  always  coming  forward  on 
both  sides  of  the  Tigris.  It  has,  however,  to  be  remembered  that  horses  adapted 
for  high-class  cavalry  cannot  be  bought  in  lots,  but  require  to  be  collected  in  the 
course  of  long  miles  of  travel.  It  would  be  very  difficult  for  remount  agents,  espe- 
cially if  Europeans,  successfully  to  compete  in  this  work  with  the  jam-bazes.  When 
the  military  authorities  of  an  Indian  Presidency  send  officers  to  buy  remounts  in 
countries  already  well  opened,  they  defeat  their  own  ends ;  for  the  supply  of  horses 
through  the  established  channels  is  thereby  checked. 

The  deputing  of  experts  for  the  purchase  of  stud  horses  rests  on  a  different 
basis,  as  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  regular  exporters  specially  address  themselves  to 
this  task.  If  we  wished  to  breed  race-horses,  whether  in  India  or  in  any  other 
country,  we  should  use  none  but  the  best  Newmarket  blood  on  both  sides.  The 
improvement  of  Eastern  stocks,  so  as  to  bring  them  up  to  the  mark  of  military 
service,  is,  however,  a  different  matter ;  and  all  who  realise  the  necessity  of  avoiding 
extremes  in  breeding,  question  the  utility,  from  this  point  of  view,  of  the  over-sized 
and  over-developed  horses  of  Europe.  Accordingly,  the  Government  of  India  for 
many  years  endeavoured  to  procure  compact  and  well-bred  Arabians  through  its 
Political  establishment  in  El  I'rak,  or  "  Turkish  Arabia"  ;  but  the  system  of  ordering 
"  per  indent "  a  dozen  or  more  horses,  all  of  the  same  pattern,  did  not  invariably 
yield  satisfactory  results  ;  and  it  is  now  considered  preferable  to  select,  in  India, 
Arabian,  or  oftener,  it  may  be  feared,  I'raki,  stallions  from  the  strings  of  the  jam- 
bazes.  A  combination  of  strong  points,  with  a  freedom  from  defects,  such  as  is 
rarely  met  with  in  Eastern  countries,  is  required  to  make  a  good  stallion  of  any 
description  ;  and  in  purchasing  horses  which  are  intended  to  contribute  through 
their  near  and  remote  descendants  to  the  defence  of  the  empire,  it  is  impossible 
to  maintain  too  high  a  standard,  provided  that  it  is  a  practical  one.  The  horses 
suitable  for  this  purpose  which  we  have  seen  in  a  decade's  residence  in  Baghdad, 
might  all  be  tied  with  one  rope.  India  is  not  the  only  foreign  country  that  draws 
on  El  I'rak  for  stud-horses.  The  Shah  of  Persia,  and  still  more  frequently  the  tribal 
magnates  who  live  by  spear  and  spur  in  the  Bakht-i-a-ri  and  Lu-ri  mountains, 
despatch  agents  in  the  same  direction.     A  few  years  ago,  a  Russian  cavalry  officer 


CHAP.  IV.       THE   ARABIAN  IN  EL   I'RAK   AND   EAST   THE    TIGRIS. 


j8s 


riding  a  weight-carrying  and  very  charger-like  Turku-ma-ni,  visited  Baghdad  on 
duty  of  this  kind  ;  but  he  did  not  see  a  horse  which  he  reckoned  worth  buyino-. 
If  he  had  been  a  novice  instead  of,  as  the  case  actually  was,  an  old  campaigner, 
he  would  have  found  no  difficulty  in  collecting  a  boat-load.  A  decade  or  two  later 
the  proper  bureau  of  the  Czar's  Government  would  most  likely  have  had  occasion 
to  pass  an  order  on  reports  submitted  to  it,  that  "  the  Arabian  stallion  had  been  tried 
and  found  wanting ; "  the  truth  perhaps  all  the  time  being,  that  not  one  of  the 
horses  which  had  been  forwarded  could  claim  other  than  a  chance  connection  with 
the  stock  of  Ku-hail. 


AN    INTERIOR   IN    BAGHDAD. 


CONCLUSION 


CONCLUSION. 

lANY  may  think  that  the  full  stop  at  the  end  of  the  preceding  chapter 
would  have  made  the  best  conclusion  ;  but  it  might  then  have  been 
said  that  everything  had  been  told  about  the  Arabian  horse  except 
where  and  how  to  find  him.  We  therefore  propose  to  consider  now 
the  various  methods  in  which  horses  of  this  breed  are  procurable — without,  of  course, 
approaching  the  too  wide  subject  of  horse-buying  generally.  And  so  many  of  our 
countrymen  are  interested  in  promoting  and  extending  the  use  of  Arabs  in  the 
British  Isles  and  Empire,  that  a  few  observations  on  the  requirements  of  Eastern 
horses  during  and  after  exportation  will  also  perhaps  be  appreciated. 

It  may  be  as  well  at  the  outset  again  to  protest  against  the  idea  that  any 
royal  road  to  success  lies  open  to  the  buyers  of  Arabian  horses.  Before  all  things, 
as  has  been  seen,  it  is  needful  that  he  who  searches  shall  possess  the  power  of  re- 
cognising the  genuine  animal  in  all  places  and  circumstances.  He  must  also  be 
able  to  decide,  in  doubtful  cases,  whether  a  horse  is  perhaps  pure-bred,  or  too  far 
outside  the  pale  to  be  worth  considering.  Another  necessary  endowment  is  the 
faculty  of  brushing  aside  random  stories  and  exaggerations.  In  some  countries, 
if  not  in  all,  it  is  a  positive  advantage  to  be  a  little  hard  of  hearing.  Persons  are  to 
be  found  in  our  islands,  both  in  the  breeder  and  the  dealer  classes,  who,  for  the  sake 
of  their  reputations,  will  honestly  give  one  the  benefit  of  their  knowledge  and  ex- 
perience. But  in  the  East  this  resource  is  not  so  fully  available,  for  the  Bedouin 
Arabs  are  not  horse-dealers,  and  Caveat  emptor  is  the  motto  of  the  jam-bazes.  A 
man  may  have  taken  the  highest  degree  in  a  veterinary  college,  and  yet  be  wanting 
in  the  power  of  obtaining  information  on  points  of  horse-history.  Do  not  then 
imagine,  O  youthful  reader,  that  the  perusal  of  the  following,  or  of  any  other  pages, 
will  qualify  you  to  go  through  a  collection  of  Eastern  horses,  and  separate  the  true 
metal  from  the  counterfeit.  Written  descriptions,  especially  when  accompanied  by 
authentic  portraits,  are  useful ;  but  experience  is  the  great  schoolmaster.     Horsemen, 

2  o 


290  CONCLUSION. 

at  least,  will  not  quarrel  with  that  portion  of  Mr  Squeers'  system  of  education 
which,  when  a  boy  had  learned  what  a  horse  was,  sent  him  to  work  out  the  re- 
mainder of  the  lesson  by  practical  methods. 

One  other  prefatory  remark  of  a  general  nature  will  perhaps  prove  useful — 
namely,  that  he  who  desires  to  buy  an  Arab  should  have  a  clear  knowledge  of  the 
proposed  object.  The  method  which  he  ought  to  follow  depends  more  or  less  on 
that.  When  merely  a  charger,  a  hunter,  or  a  pleasure-horse  is  wanted,  it  is  seldom 
advisable  to  go  behind  the  regular  exporters,  and  try  to  approach  the  breeders.  To 
find  a  colt  which  shall  win  a  name  in  racing  story  is  a  far  more  serious  undertaking. 
And  when  the  design  is  to  obtain  an  Arabian  good  enough  in  points  and  pedigree 
to  improve  the  character  of  other  breeds,  special  opportunities  have  to  be  awaited. 


Section  I. — Of  buying  straight  from  the  Bedouin. 

We  say  "straight,"  because  the  European  who  deputes  an  Arab,  or  an 
Traki,  messenger,  or  agent,  to  go  and  buy  horses  for  him  in  the  Arabian  desert, 
can  scarcely  lay  claim  to  a  sound  understanding. 

"  Let  every  eye  negotiate  for  itself, 
And  trust  no  agents,"  ^ 

should  be  written  in  large  letters,  and  kept  before  the  eyes  of  every  one  whose 
situation  exposes  him  to  this  temptation.  As  for  him  who  is  sent  on  such  an 
errand,  his  courage  mounts  with  the  occasion.  His  employer  may  be  in  Europe, 
or  in  India,  or,  at  the  nearest,  in  a  town  of  El  I'rak  or  Syria.  In  order  to  join 
the  Bedouin,  he  must  necessarily  enter  spaces  where  there  are  no  posts  and 
telegraphs.  He  must  also  carry  the  requisite  cash,  in  gold  if  he  go  towards 
Damascus,  or  in  dollars  in  Arabia  proper,  for  the  wandering  Arabs  laugh  at 
paper  money.  The  reader  may  be  more  inclined  to  wonder  at  a  messenger 
in  these  circumstances  ever  returning,  than  at  his  doing  so  after  unfaithful 
service ;  but  the  latter  is  the  Eastern  method.  Usually  the  man  makes  a  com- 
promise with  his  conscience.  While  serving  himself  first,  he  also  tries  to  obtain 
some  return  for  his  employer.  One  great  question  with  him,  naturally,  is  how 
to  avoid  the  danger  of  falling  among  thieves.  If  he  is  a  native  of  El  I'rak  or  Syria, 
he  settles  perhaps  for  a  year  on  the  Euphrates,  and  utilises  the  money  which 
has  so  foolishly  been  intrusted  to  him  in  setting  up  a  little  cultivation.  Or,  if 
ambitious  of  connecting  himself  with  the  Bedouin,  he  may  enter  the  desert,  claim 
a  Shekh's  hospitality,  and  sue  for  the  hand   of  a  tent-maiden — as  is  needless  to 

1  "  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,"  Act  ii.  sc.  i. 


OF  BUYING   STRAIGHT  FROM   THE  BEDOUIN.  291 

say,   unsuccessfully.     At  last,   when  he  thinks  that  it  is  time  to  return,   he  buys 
a  number  of  "peacocky"  horses  in  towns  like  Der  or  wherever  he  sees  them,  and 
unblushingly  delivers  them  to  his  employer. 
A  Persian  poet  says — 

If  thou  art  single  on  the  pack, 

Ride  where  thou  hast  a  mind ; 
But  with  another  at  thy  back, 

'Tis  best  to  be  resigned  !  ^ 

This  may  apply  to  Orientals.  But  as  regards  our  countrymen,  we  fail  to  per- 
ceive that  even  the  bliss  of  matrimony  in  any  sensible  degree  restrains  the  tendency 
to  travel.  Taking  no  account  of  family  parties,  or  of  cases  in  which  the  explorer  is 
a  spinster  or  a  widow,  it  may  be  depended  on  that  for  the  traveller,  as  for  the  soldier 
and  the  sailor,  no  pole-star  is  so  full  of  guidance  as  the  '' placens  tLXor"  who  is  waiting 
for  him  in  England.  Nevertheless  it  is  too  true  that  none  of  our  countrymen,  or 
countrywomen,  whose  steps  have  trod  Arabia  proper,  have  ever  yet  tested  the  hospi- 
tality of  nations  like  Kah-tan,  with  the  view  of  discovering  the  extent  to  which  they 
practise  horse-breeding.  The  circumstances  which  account  for  this  have  been  de- 
scribed in  an  earlier  chapter.^  It  has  also  been  unreservedly  stated  that  Najd  is  the 
source  of  sources ;  and  that  it  becomes  us  to  be  guarded  in  all  conclusions  relative  to 
the  richness  of  Arabia  in  horses,  till  the  innermost  pastures  of  the  peninsula  shall 
be  examined.  We  therefore  wait  for  the  appearance  in  the  rising  generation  of 
a  Mr  Blunt  and  a  Mr  Doughty  rolled  into  one,  before  whose  spirit  of  adven- 
ture and  force  of  character  the  guardian  genii  of  the  Nu-fudh  will  vanish.  Our 
regret  is  that,  unless  we  should  quit  the  safe  ground  of  personal  knowledge,  we 
cannot,  as  regards  Najd,  afford  to  such  traveller  of  the  future  any  very  useful 
hints  or  itinerary.  The  programme  which  is  about  to  be  offered  to  the  buyer 
of  Arabian  horses  of  authentic  pedigree  will  not  conduct  him  into  middle  Arabia. 
The  starting-point  may  be  either  Aleppo  or  Damascus  at  his  pleasure.  The 
ground  marked  out  includes  all  the  spaces  into  which  the  tribes  of  Najd  have 
kept  issuing,  ever  since  the  overthrow  of  the  ancient  nationalities  of  Syria 
by  the  Chaldsean  empire.  Numerous  facts  bearing  on  our  present  subject  have 
already  been  cited ;  for  example,  that  the  Darley  was  bought  in  the  deserts 
touched  by  the  Euphrates ;  ^  and  that  Burckhardt  recommended  Damascus  as  a 
good  position  for  the  establishment  of  persons  employed  to  purchase  high-class 
Arabians.*  It  has  further  appeared  how  easy,  and  to  one  possessing  Bohemian 
habits  and  a  sound  digestion  how  delightful,  it  is  for  the  European  to  visit  the 
camps,  or  rather  cities  of  camps,  which  form  the  only  hospitable  features  of  the 


1  Sa'-di,  in  the  "  Gul-istan." 
"   V.  ante,  p.  33,  et  pp.  44,  45. 


3   V.  ante,  p.  269. 
*   V.  ante,  p.  64. 


292 


CONCLUSION. 


barren  land  between  the  middle  course  of  the  Euphrates  and  El  I'rak.  Occa- 
sionally people  write  to  us,  both  from  Europe  and  India,  asking  to  be  informed 
how  to  procure  Arab  horses,  taller,  or  faster,  or  handsomer,  or  cheaper,  or  of 
surer  pedigrees,  than  those  exported  by  the  jam-bazes.  It  is  always  difficult  to 
answer  such  letters,  either  from  knowing  too  little  of  the  writer,  or  because  he 
evidently  expects  to  receive,  through  some  deus  ex  machind,  and  without  risk 
or  trouble  on  his  part,  specimens  of  the  best  colts  or  fillies,  or  brood  mares,  in 
Arabia.  But  if  we  imagine  ourselves  speaking  here  to  one  of  our  countrymen 
whose  enthusiasm  prompts  him  to  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  Aeniza  horse-stock, 
the  following  is  what  occurs  to  us.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  you  are  a  judge  of 
horses,  not  self-styled,  but  made  by  experience.  If  not  a  specialist  on  Arabs,  it  may 
be  all  the  better.  Your  mind  will  be  the  opener ;  you  will  not  go  to  worship,  any 
more  than  to  cavil,  but  will  take  things  soberly  as  you  find  them.  First  of  all,  it  is 
necessary  to  acquire  some  knowledge  of  Arabic.  Do  not  all  at  once  run  off  on  this 
errand  to  Arabia.  A  layer  of  book-work  ^  forms  the  proper  foundation  ;  and  that  is 
better  laid  wherever  one  may  be  in  a  tolerable  climate,  and  with  a  competent  person 
to  assist,  than  amid  the  distractions  of  travel.  Beware  of  outfitters  and  outfits. 
Nothing  that  requires  to  be  whitened,  or  blackened,  or  starched,  or  ironed,  is  suitable 
for  the  Arabian  desert.  The  best  material  for  shoes  is  the  deer-skin  which  in 
India  is  called  sdm-bar.  The  ideal  dress  for  Eastern  travel  is  that  which,  while 
draping  the  "forked  radish"  aspect  of  humanity,  shall  be  equally  comfortable  to 
walk,  ride,  and  sleep  in  ;  having  nothing  tight  about  it  except  the  hi-zdm,  or  belt, 
which  girds  the  loins.  An  inside-pocket  should  hold  a  trusty  stop-watch.  The 
best  route  is  by  Bombay,  where  it  is  not  impossible  to  engage  a  couple  of  Indian 
riding-lads.  Among  the  Arabs  there  is  no  lack  of  youths  who  can  "  ride  like 
fiends,"  as  the  saying  is ;  but  that  is  precisely  what  is  not  wanted  here.  The 
biggest  box,  or  only  big  box,  in  your  baggage  should  hold  a  couple  of  5  lb.  saddles, 
a  few  snaffle  bridles,  and  an  eighth  of  a  mile  steel  chain  to  measure  off  a  trial- 
ground.  Tentes  <£abris,  common  saddles,  and  other  travelling  requisites,  are  best 
bought  in  El  I'rak.  By  way  of  "sinews,"  ^1000  should  prove  sufficient.  Brains 
will  improve  a  slender  capital ;  while  one  effect  of  too  much  money  often  is  to 
make  us  unduly  depend  on  others.  Thus  prepared,  you  would  find  Bussorah  a 
good  starting-point.       Half  of  your  money  should  be  sent  from  there,  through  a 


1  Phrase-books  in  the  Roman  character  may  fulfil 
all  the  requirements  of  Cook's  tourists  ;  but  the  key- 
to  a  country  is  its  language  ;  and  the  Arabic  alphabet, 
which  is  also  that  of  the  Turks,  the  Persians,  and  the 
Muslim  Indians,  need  frighten  no  one.     The  excellent 


Arabic  grammar  by  the  late  Professor  Wright  of  Cam- 
bridge is  unfortunately  out  of  print.  A  good  substi- 
tute for  it  is  that  by  Dr  A.  Socin  (1S85),  Professor 
in  the  University  of  Tubingen.  A  very  small  gram- 
mar is  that  by  Fi-ris  El  Shidiac,  of  Beyrouth. 


OF  BUYING   STRAIGHT  FROM   THE  BEDOUIN.  293 

Consulate,  to  Damascus.  The  next  step  would  be  to  buy  riding  -  camels,  and 
engage  three  followers  of  the  liberated  slave  class,  which  would  cost  about  ^100. 
With  the  remaining  ;^400  in  your  waist-belt  you  should  then  join  a  party  of  Agelis 
who  are  going  to  Al  Ha-sa  to  purchase  camels.  If  you  should  choose  the  easy 
Arab  cloak  and  tunic,  remember  that,  in  Northern  Arabia,  disguise  is  as  unpolitic, 
ahd  indeed  ridiculous,  as  it  is  unnecessary.  Poetry  never  uttered  a  sounder  warning 
through  any  of  her  prophets  than  Scott's  in  "  Marmion  "  : — 

"  O  what  a  tangled  web  we  weave, 
When  first  we  practise  to  deceive  !  " 

However  dressed,  be  known  for  an  Englishman  and  a  Christian.  Outside 
of  the  Peninsula  religion  counts  for  little,  and  no  one  has  a  right  to  pretend  to 
believe  in  another's  faith,  or  to  go  through  forms  of  worship  as  a  kind  of  play- 
acting. Short  of  that,  the  company  manners  of  the  Arabs  should  be  studied, 
and  more  or  less  adopted.  At  first  these  do  not  attract  us,  but  by  degrees  we 
perceive  their  advantages.  Even  the  oriental  mode  of  eating  proceeds  upon 
the  sound  principle  that  every  man  can  rinse  his  fingers,  whereas  the  clean- 
ing of  a  knife  and  fork  is  an  undeveloped  art  in  backward  countries.  A  well- 
washed  hand  is  better  than  an  unrubbed  iron,  or,  as  is  daily  seen  in  India,  a 
spoon  freshly  wiped  with  the  end  of  a  scullion's  turban.  Between  the  Medi- 
terranean and  the  Sea  of  Persia  men's  complexions  are  too  diverse  for  mere 
colour  to  attract  particular  attention.  As  for  speech,  the  Aeniza  and  the  Sham- 
mar  are  accustomed  to  hear  the  pure  language  of  the  Ku-raish  infinitely  confused 
and  deformed  by  strangers.  Well-worn  garments  are  not  only  the  most  com- 
fortable, but  also  least  excite  the  covetous  thoughts  of  the  Bedouin.  Above  all 
things,  keep  clear  of  the  style  and  manners  of  a  Pasha.  Rather  be  one  whose 
estate  needs  mending,  and  who  would  improve  it  by  Arab  methods.  Thus  it 
will  be  the  easier  for  you,  while  moving  about  in  Al  Ha-sa,  to  suit  yourself 
from  among  your  Ageli  friends  with  a  ra-fik  or  partner.  Aw-zval  ra-ftk, 
thun-ma  ta-rik,  or.  First,  a  companion,  then  the  road,  is  a  maxim  among  the 
Arabs.  An  associate  of  this  kind,  to  whom  a  small  money  interest  in  the  enter- 
prise has  been  given,  is  essential  to  success  ;  but  he  should  not  be  a  townsman, 
or  one  who  has  seen  the  world.  After  collecting  camels  in  Arabia  Proper,  and 
moving  with  them,  still  under  Ageli  pilotage,  to  Damascus,  you  would  there 
find  such  a  brisk  demand  for  camel  cattle,  that  you  might  sell  a  part  of  the 
drove  for  the  cost  price  of  the  whole ;  or,  otherwise,  you  might  retain  all  your 
camels,  with  the  view  of  bartering  them  for  colts  and  fillies.  Elsewhere  it  has 
been  seen   that  camels   represent   more  money  in  Sha-mi-ya  than  in    Najd ;    and, 


294 


CONCLUSION. 


irrespective!)^  of  commercial  value,  a  beautiful  dromedary  exercises  an  extraor- 
dinary power  over  the  hearts  of  the  Bedouin.  Once  we  chanced  to  be  in  an 
encampment  of  the  Sham-mar  when  a  southerner  arrived  with  a  string  of  camels. 
It  did  not  appear  whether  he  was  a  horse-dealer  and  a  camel-dealer  combined, 
or  only  the  latter.  The  first  thing  which  struck  us  was  how  comfortably  he 
progressed,  with  camels'  milk  to  sup  on,  unlimited  transport,  and  a  family  party 
of  stalwart  brethren  to  assist  him.  His  camels  were  in  an  exhausted  state. 
Through  over-travel  their  humps  cleaved  to  their  bellies,  as  the  Arabs  say.^  All 
their  beauty  depended  on  their  breeding,  and  that  produced  a  great  impression. 
As  the  news  of  their  arrival  spread,  groups  of  Bedouin  horsemen,  with  their  long 
spears  over  their  shoulders,  repaired  to  the  spot  from  considerable  distances. 
Merchant-buyers  like  those  of  Ku-wait,  who  will  take  colts  as  they  are  offered, 
good  and  middling  all  in  a  lot,  without  minding  how  long  their  strings  may 
grow,  certainly  find  it  more  advantageous  to  buy  with  camels  than  with  money. 
We  shall,  however,  suppose  you  to  sell  off  the  shuffle-footed  cargo  which  you 
brought  with  you  from  Al  Ha-sa,  except  a  few  head  retained  as  riding- camels 
and  milchers.  It  would  be  well  to  leave  those  with  two  of  your  black  servants 
among  the  qtiasi  Bedouin  round  Damascus,  while  you  yourself  set  off  to  the 
fertile  Syrian  district  of  Al  Hau-ran.  It  would  be  necessary  there  to  set  up  a 
regular  horse  nursery — on  which,  however,  no  buildings  would  have  to  be  erected, 
as  booths  of  black  blanketing  are  sufficient  in  that  Arcadian  climate.  ^loo  laid 
out  on  cultivation  would  bring  your  crops  well  forward.  Protected  by  the  Druses, 
your  property  would  be  safe.  Your  labourers  would  be  paid  in  produce,  and 
the  customary  rate  is  one-fourth  of  every  harvest.  Intrusting  the  depot  to  your 
third  slave-servant,  you  and  your  companion  would  then  have  to  join  a  caravan 
of   merchants  trading  with   the   Bedouin   proper.^      A   couple  of  hundred  pounds 


^  The  camel  is  said  to  feed  on  the  fat  of  his  own 
hump^  and  this  is  proverbial  in  Arabia.  What  the 
paunch  is  in  man,  and  the  top  of  the  tail  in  sheep, 
the  sa-7idm,  or  hump,  is  in  the  camel, — his  provision 
for  a  time  of  leanness. 

^  Such  of  the  Bedouin  people  as  periodically  ap- 
proach towns  are  much  attracted  by  the  shops.  We 
lately  saw  at  Kar-ba-la  a  brisk  trade  going  on  with 
the  Aeniza  in  metal  saucer-baths  from  Birmingham  ; 
and  on  inquiry  it  appeared  that  these  utensils  are  now, 
within  certain  circuits,  replacing  the  ancient  wooden 
trenchers  from  which  the  Arab  of  the  desert  eats  his 
mutton. —  V.  ante,  p.  191.  The  remoter  Bedouin  na- 
tions depend  on  pedlars.  Articles  of  dress,  swords, 
powder  and  ball,  horse-shoes,  nails,  iron,  leather,  cof- 
fee, tobacco,  and  spices  thus  reach  them.  Damascus 
is  a  great  starting-place  of  the  pedlars.    The  travelling 


merchants  possess  their  own  tents  and  camels.  When 
they  have  joined  a  camp  they  move  about  with  it, 
and  they  will  barter  their  goods  for  sheep  and  butter. 
Another  town  from  which  they  set  out  is  Ku-bai-sa, 
situated  at  the  I'rak  entrance  of  Sha-mi-ya.  In  sum- 
mer and  autumn  Ku-bai-sa  is  half  empty,  while  its 
inhabitants  are  out  with  merchandise  among  the 
Aeniza.  Burckhardt  says  of  the  traders  who  in  his 
day  had  their  homes  in  Damascus,  that  they  were 
"men  of  probity,  and  in  good  esteem  among  the  Bed- 
ouin "  ;  that  half  of  them  were  Christians  ;  and  that 
"should  a  European  traveller  wish  to  visit  the  in- 
terior of  the  desert  between  Damascus  and  the  Per- 
sian Gulf,  he  may  best  contrive  to  accomplish  his 
design  through  their  assistance "  {op.  cit.  in  Catalog. 
No.   15,  vol.  i.  p.   195). 


OF  BUYING   STRAIGHT  FROM   THE  BEDOUIN. 


29s 


invested   in  cloth  and  other  merchandise  would   furnish   you  with  the  best  intro- 
duction  to  the    nomadic  nations  of  the    Euphrates.      Thus   in   a   short  time   you 
would  find   yourself  among  the  real    Arabs    of  the    desert.      The    advantages    of 
the   unostentatious   style  of  travelling  would    then  be   apparent.      Several   of  our 
countrymen    have    paid    such    high    prices    for    Arab    horses,    and    exhibited    such 
enthusiasm,  that  to  this  day  Sha-mi-ya  and  Al  Ja-zi-ra  long  for  the  coming  of  others 
like  them.      We  have  grown  chary  of  those  of  the  Bedouin  who  cultivate  what  in 
Europe  would  be  called  a  shid.     A  simple  fellow  who   owns  but  one  mare,  and 
rides  her,  is  more    likely  to  tie  a  genuine    colt  or    filly  beside  his   tent  than  the 
Shekh  who  boasts  a  wide    connection  with   Pashas,  Consuls,  and  jam-bazes.     But 
when  one  is  travelling  as  a  Beg,  or  European  of  position,  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  enter  a  Bedouin  encampment  without  being  conducted  straight  to  the    Shekh's 
ma-dhif  or  guest-tent.      Even  when   the  stranger  is  permitted   to   set  up   his  own 
little  tent,  the  Bedouin  will  be  attracted  by  it,   as  schoolboys  are  by  the  monkey- 
house  in  the  Zoological    Gardens.     Sticks  may  not  be   pushed  through  its  open- 
ings, but  it  will  be  intruded  on  in  every  possible  manner.      If  he  offer  a  price  for  a 
colt — no   nomad  will  condescend  to  name  a  sum  himself — the  result  will  be  that 
the  owner  will  jump  on  its  back  and  ride  out  of  sight  in  a  huff,^  perhaps  to  return, 
perhaps  not.     Under  no  circumstances  are  the  Aeniza  easy  to  deal  with  ;  but  the 
more  quietly  you  approach  them,  the  less  impracticable  you  will  find  them.     The 
proper  class  of  stock  to  purchase  would  be  two-year-olds  which  had  suffered  no 
unfair  usage.      The  very  flower  of  the  race  should  be  taken, — the  broad-hipped, 
large-jointed,  darting-actioned  colts  and  fillies,  of  assured  Al  Kkam-sa  lineage,  but 
not  necessarily  of  "fancy  strains."     These  selections  should  be  sent  to  drink  milk 
and  grow  to  three-year-olds  among  the  Damascus  Arabs,  while  you  waited  to  pick 
a  second  lot  from  the  following  season's  two-year-olds.     By  the  time  that  you  had 
accomplished  this  task,  your  first  year's  purchases  would  have  ripened.      It  would 
then  be  proper  to  transfer  these  first-fruits  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Damascus 
to  the   Hau-ran  farm,  where  there  would  be  plenty  of  barley.      In  a  few  months' 
time,    with  the  help  of  your  riding-lads,  you   would  know  more  about  them   than 
mere  looking  at   them   would    ever   tell   you.       The    Arabs  say  that  the  horse  is 
in  the  foal,  as  the  flower  is  in  the   hid ;  but  then   the  bud  cannot  be  seen    into. 
Such   of  your   selections  as  did    not  look   as  well  after  a  course   of  steady  work 
as   when   only  standing,   could  be  sold    to    the  jam-bazes.       Season    after  season 
it  would   be  necessary  to  follow  the  same  course  of  buying,  feeding,  trying,  and 
drafting.      In   two   or  three  years'  time  you   would   find  yourself  possessed   of  a 


'  Arabic  also  contains  the  imitative  word  hajf,  in 
the  sense  of  blowing,  as  the  wind  does.     What  we 


call  a  fan,  and  the  Indians  a  pank-lid,  is  mu-haf-fa 
in  Arabic. 


296  CONCLUSION. 

collection  of  the  very  best  stock  which   Northern  Arabia  has  to   offer,— of  Najdi 

race  ;    proved    runners,    supposing    the  gaudia   certaminis    to  form    your    object ; 
young,  sound,  and  of  ascertained  pedigrees. 


Section   II. — Of  buying  in  Arabian  and  I'raki  Towns. 

So  much  has  been  said  on  this  subject,  that  the  merest  summary  of  the  chief 
facts  will  now  suffice. 

In  towns  like  Ha-yil,  where  Arab,  not  Osmanli,  rule  prevails,  the  European 
stranger  is  allowed  but  little  liberty  of  action.  A  mare  can  hardly  be  moved  from 
her  pickets  for  his  inspection  without  the  A-mir's  order.  Instead  of  quietly 
marking  such  animals  as  he  would  like  to  purchase,  and  afterwards  tempting 
their  owners  to  part  with  them,  he  has  to  take  those  which  are  offered  to  him, 
and  express  his  obligations  at  the  same  time  that  he  pays  the  money. 

In  parts  like  Bussorah,  where  Turkish  officials  fill  the  chief  places,  the  field 
is  opener.  A  late  Governor-General  of  El  I'rak  was  so  fond  of  horses,  or 
rather  of  the  money  which  they  represented,  that  he  never  went  on  tour 
without  brineinof  back  both  colts  and  fillies  which  he  had  collected  from  the 
Bedouin.  At  that  period,  chiefly  at  the  instance  of  that  very  Pasha,  the  Sul- 
tan's Government  persistently  obstructed  the  export  of  horses.  But  an  easy 
way  of  getting  round  this  difficulty  was  open  to  the  wealthier  dealers.  When 
one  of  them  had  a  string  of  horses  which  he  desired  to  take  to  India,  all 
that  he  had  to  do  was,  to  buy  two  or  three  colts  from  the  Pasha,  in  the 
price  of  which  a  pass  for  all  the  others  was  tacitly  understood  to  be  included. 
To  our  certain  knowledge,  several  very  high-class  Najdi  horses  have,  in  the  course 
of  the  last  ten  years,  thus  been  taken  from  Baghdad  to  India.  And  apart  from 
officials,  there  are  many  Persian  and  Indian  residents  of  Baghdad  and  Kar-ba-la 
who  are  great  collectors  of  Arab  mares  and  horses  from  the  Bedouin  nations. 
It  is  true  that  such  people  do  not,  as  a  rule,  sell  their  property;  but  many  a 
horse  and  other  object  which  is  "not  for  sale,"  may  nevertheless  be  bought. 
Outside  of  the  trafficking  classes,  all  Easterns  like  to  call  that  with  which  they 
part  a  gift,  and  the  price  which  they  receive  the  return  present.  Self-respect 
is  thus  maintained,  while  mutual  kindly  feeling  is  strengthened.  Before  any 
European  founds  on  these  facts  the  conclusion  that  towns  like  Baghdad  are 
good  places  to  visit  in  search  of  Arab  horses,  it  will  be  well  for  him  to  consider 
all  that  has  been  stated  about  the  activity  of  the  jam-bazes.  While  he  is  sleep- 
ing, or  dining,  or  writing  letters,  these  people  will  be  on  the  watch.  No  sooner 
does  a  horde    of  the    Bedouin    encamp  within  a    two   or  three    daj^s'  journey  of 


OF  PROCURING    THROUGH  CONSULATES    OR   CONSULS.  297 

a  town,  than  a  stream  of  professional  buyers  begins  to  flow  in  their  direction.  At 
such  times,  one  may  also  notice  long-haired  and  barefooted  figures  leading  colts 
into  the  town.  This  may  seem  to  contradict  the  commonly  accepted  statement 
that  the  Bedouin  will  not  bring  their  colts  to  market.  But  all  such  rules  are  sub- 
ject to  exceptions  ;  and,  besides,  it  is  not  always  that  these  hawkers  of  colts  are  true 
Bedouin.  Under  most  circumstances,  when  a  horse  of  note  is  brought  into  a  town, 
the  jam-bazes  are  sure  to  see  him  before  any  word  of  him  reaches  the  European 
quarter.  It  is  the  case  that  the  Englishman  may  afterwards  buy  the  animal  from 
the  jam-baz  who  has  been  beforehand  with  him  ;  but  in  order  to  play  this  card, 
he  must  be  a  resident,  not  a  visitor,  as  such  chances  do  not  often  happen.  More- 
over, the  price  that  he  will  have  to  pay  will  represent  not  only  the  animal's  value 
in  the  distant  market  for  which  he  is  intended,  but  the  sum  which  his  owner  hopes, 
or  imagines,   that  he  will  there  obtain  for  him. 


Section   III. — Of  procuring  through  Consulates  or  Consuls. 

Travellers,  especially  those  of  position,  expect  a  great  deal  of  assistance 
from  Consuls.  The  Government  mint-mark  is  supposed  to  instil  information  into 
these  officials  ;  and  in  some  situations  they  are  regarded  as  co-ordinate  with  Divine 
Providence.  But  in  order  to  sift  this,  it  is  necessary  to  know  the  Consul,  and 
also  the  dragoman,  or  other  member  of  his  establishment,  through  whose  filmy 
eyes  he  chiefly  sees  things.  The  situation  of  the  Consulate  also  requires  to 
be  considered.  From  the  point  of  view  which  now  concerns  us,  the  Damascus, 
Aleppo,  and  Bussorah  Consulates  are  more  advantageous  positions  than  the 
Baghdad  one.      The  British  flag,  unfortunately,  no  longer  flies  at  Mosul. 

The  influence  of  the  foreign  Consulates  in  Asiatic  Turkey  is,  at  the  best, 
a  very  variable  quantity.  The  local  people  who  are  the  most  forward  to  cultivate 
a  connection  with  them  do  not  invariably  belong  to  the  most  respectable  classes. 
The  Shekhs  of  the  Arabs  will  freely  give  their  friendship  in  exchange  for  Martinis, 
telescopes,  and  revolvers  ;  but  when  a  service  is  proposed  to  them  in  return,  they 
only  "ask  for  more."  They  reserve  their  own  offerings  for  Turkish  Pashas. 
The  sentiment  of  clannishness  produces  the  same  effects  in  tribal  bodies  which 
nationality  does  in  Europe.  No  British  tradesman  ever  seriously  quarrelled  with 
himself  for  overcharging  a  Frenchman.  And  in  the  case  of  the  Arabs,  honesty, 
and  even  generosity,  inside  the  gens,  are  not  incompatible  with  cunning  and  rapacity 
for  all  who  are  outside  of  it. 

It  should  further  be  observed  that  a  Consulate  cannot  cultivate  the  friend- 
ship of  the   Bedouin  Arabs,  without  the  susceptibihties  of  the  Ottoman  Govern- 

2  p 


298  CONCLUSION. 

ment  being  thereby  offended.  The  reason  of  this  is  obvious.  Jealousy  of 
European  influence  forms  a  marked  feature  in  the  poHcy  and  attitude  of  the 
Porte,  especially  in  its  outlying  provinces.  When  a  Consul  quits  his  flag-town,  the 
authorities  are  careful  to  send  an  escort  with  him.  Even  if  he  were  to  obtain 
regular  leave  of  absence,  it  is  probable  that  he  would  experience  greater  diffi- 
culty than  a  private  person  in  forming  the  acquaintance  of  the  Bedouin  nations. 
It  is  true  that,  if  he  cannot  easily  go  out  himself,  he  has  those  whom  he  can 
send;  but  the  warning  above  given  against  buying  through  agents  is  here  appli- 
cable. To  borrow  an  Arab  figure,  those  who  cultivate  this  field  will  always  be 
thin.  We  write  these  words  feelingly.  A  few  autumns  ago,  when  the  dates  were 
turning  golden,  and  the  Aeniza,  according  to  their  habit,  were  swarming  into 
El  I'rak  to  buy  them,  rumour  said  that  in  one  of  their  camps  there  was  a  dark- 
grey  colt,  of  the  Had-ban  In-ze-hi  strain,  which  was  bound  to  grow  into  a  horse. 
Everybody  talked  about  this  colt,  and  his  services  were  in  great  request  among 
horse-breeders  on  the  Tigris.  For  official  reasons,  it  was  impossible  to  set  out 
after  him.  It  was  to  be  feared  that,  if  a  professional  buyer  were  to  be  paid 
for  going  to  see  him,  he  would  contrive  to  get  him  for  himself,  and  keep  him,  if 
he  liked  him ;  while  if  a  greenhorn  were  sent,  he  would  take  him  as  a  cock 
does  a  gooseberry.  The  messenger  chosen  was  "respectable,"  but  he  was  in- 
experienced. In  due  time  he  returned,  proudly  leading,  in  lieu  of  the  fifty  honest 
liras  which  we  had  given  him,  a  spidery  object,  whose  fore-legs  looked  as  if  they 
grew  out  of  one  hole ;  too  light  for  draught ;  straight-shouldered ;  very  pinched 
in  the  girthing-place ;  and  with  wretched  walking  action.  The  jam-bazes  were 
busy  buying  for  India,  but  ^15  was  the  highest  offer  which  any  of  them  would 
make  for  him !  A  plain-spoken  friend  was  of  opinion  that  A'-ji-lu  '1  Fu-gu-gi, 
the  Shekh  of  the  Di-wam  division  of  the  Sba',  into  whose  Tartarean  pouch 
our  sovereigns  had  descended,  must  have  "lifted"  him  from  some  tribe  of  cow- 
keepers  ;  but  it  was  not  so.  For  one  thing,  he  had  the  true  Arabian  head,  with 
a  large  and  bold  jtb-ha,  or  forehead,  covering  the  brain-cavity.  His  skin  was 
very  fine;  and  every  hair  in  the  mane  and  tail  was  separate  and  silky.  His 
back  and  loins  were  beautifully  formed,  and  by  the  power  of  them  he  "lost," 
one  morning  in  a  mile  trial,  an  I'ra-ki  mare  bulky  enough  to  carry  him.  Unless 
there  exist  some  fatality  which  suspends,  where  the  Arabs  are  concerned,  the 
common  rules  of  evidence,  both  his  sire  and  dam  belonged  to  one  of  the  great 
strains  of  Najd,  and  the  former  had  been  bought  at  a  large  price  by  a  Consul 
for  a  stud  in  Europe,  during  the  northward  migration  in  the  year  before  of  the  Di- 
wam  Aeniza.  Nevertheless,  after  two  years'  keep,  he  appeared  only  fit  to  carry 
a  desert  urchin.  When  a  colt  is  shaped  like  him,  why  should  we  concern  ourselves 
with  his  pedigree  ? 


OF  BUYING  ARABIANS    WHICH  HAVE  BEEN  EXPORTED. 


299 


Section  IV. — Of  buying  Arabians  which  have  been  Exported. 

This  means,  taking  advantage  in  distant  markets,  chiefly  or  wholly  the  In- 
dian and  the  Egyptian,  of  the  labours  and  experience  of  the  professional  buyers. 
We  cannot  speak  of  Egypt  from  recent  personal  knowledge.  Perhaps,  if  the 
British  occupation  continue,  the  jam-bazes  of  Upper  I'rak  and  Syria  will  more 
and  more  look  for  a  market  in  Cairo,  especially  in  the  present  fallen  state  of  the 
Indian  rupee.  But  it  may  safely  be  asserted  that,  in  our  clay,  as  for  the  last 
hundred  years  or  so,  Bombay  is  the  best  and  greatest  market  in  the  world 
for  Arabian  horses. ^  It  has  been  seen  how,  during  several  months  of  every 
year,  the  draught  of  a  vast  drag-net,  which  has  been  passed  more  or  less  over 
all  the  country  of  the  Arabian  horse,  discharges  itself  into  India.  There  is 
not  a  colt  in  Arabia  which  may  not  one  day  be  seen  at  Byculla.  On  several 
occasions  we  have  recognised  in  the  Bombay  sale-stables  a  pedigree  horse  which 
we  had  known,  a  year  or  two  previously,  in  Sha-mi-ya.  In  the  saddling  paddock 
at  Poona,  on  the  Governor's  Cup  day,  a  larger  number  of  first-class  Arabians  are 
annually  assembled  than  may  easily  be  seen  in  any  one  spot  in  Arabia,  if  the 
brood-mares  and  fillies  be  excepted.  All  credit,  then,  to  the  jam-bazes  of  Najd, 
the  "Flanks  of  Najd,"  I'rak  A'rabi,  and  Mosul.  If,  thus  far,  we  have  done  less 
than  justice  to  these  hard-working  and  far-travelled  traders,  we  would  here  make 
up  for  it.  There  is  an  Eastern  proverb  that  when  a  stranger  offers  you  curdled 
milk,  two  measures  are  water  and  one  spoonful  is  whey.  It  has  been  seen 
how  completely  this  description  applies  to  the  jam-bazes;  but  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  them  to  carry  on  their  useful  calling  on  any  other  principle.  They 
do  not  leave  their  homes,  and  wives  and  families,  for  the  greater  part  of  every 
year,  merely  that  they  may  enjoy  a  change  of  climate.  When,  by  chance,  they 
obtain  a  true  specimen  of  the  Arabian,  they  expect,  to  borrow  their  own  ex- 
pression, that  a  number  of  inferior  ones  will  "go  down  as  broth  to  him" — that 
is,  sell  because  of  him.  The  spirit  of  speculation  which  is  born  in  the  Arab 
race  gains  in  energy  by  not  having  too  many  outlets.  Israel,  we  know,  while 
forbidden  to  "lend  upon  usury"  to  a  "brother,"  was  permitted  to  do  so  "unto 
a  foreio-ner."  ^  But  the  Arab  lawgiver  condemned,  and  cursed,  the  "  eating 
of  usury,"  without  making  any  reservation  or  distinction.-^     The  consequence  is, 


1  We  lately  wintered  in  Bombay.  In  five  or  six 
months,  about  3000  horses  were  received  from  the 
ports  on  the  Persian  Gulf.  Out  of  that  number,  stud- 
horses were  selected  for  the  whole  of  India ;  and  for 
Queensland,  Germany,  the  United  States  of  America, 


and  other  countries.  Every  day  witnessed  the  diffusion 
of  horses  ;  and  when  the  season  closed,  the  unsold 
residue  was  inconsiderable. 

^Deuteronomy  xxiii.  ig,  20. 

2  Al  Kur-an  :  Su-ras  ii.  et  iii. 


300  CONCL  US  ION. 

that  ever)^  true  Arab  who  would  increase  his  store  is  compelled  to  do  so  either 
by  his  personal  labour  or  through  the  direct  agency  of  a  partner  or  a  servant. 
From  hearing  a  jam-baz  talk,  one  would  think  that  every  trip  which  he  performed 
brought  him  the  nearer  to  beggary.  Horse-flesh,  he  says,  is  a  very  mother  of 
teeth  as  merchandise — that  is,  "eats  its  head  off."  Nevertheless,  thousands  of 
Arabs  thrive  by  it,  and  add  house  to  house,  wife  to  wife,  and  progeny  to  pro- 
geny. No  one  can  pass  through  Bombay  without  remarking,  in  its  motley  tide 
of  nationalities,  the  yearly  influx  of  Arab  horse-dealers.  The  long  cloaks  and 
particoloured  head  -  dresses  of  these  people  are  characteristically  Arab ;  but  it 
is  the  acme  of  absurdity  to  imagine  that  they  are  of  the  Bedouin.  Each  man 
retains  the  charge  of  his  horses  as  long  as  they  stand  unsold.  About  half-a- 
dozen  commission-stables  divide  the  business  among  them.  The  keeping  of  one 
of  these  repositories  is  a  safe  and  profitable  speculation,  in  order  to  embark  in 
which  it  is  only  necessary  to  acquire  a  piece  of  ground,  put  up  a  few  sheds,  and 
engage  a  book-keeper.  Every  importer  feeds  his  own  horses,  and  if  he  have 
enough  of  English  or  Hindustani,  deals  more  or  less  directly  with  buyers.  The 
owner  of  the  place  is  generally  a  native  of  India.  Our  countrymen  do  not  ap- 
pear to  have  much  inclination  for  this  essentially  oriental  form  of  horse  traffic.  At 
every  deal,  a  fixed  fee  from  the  purchaser,  and  an  equal  sum  from  the  vendor, 
pass  into  the  stable-keeper's  pocket,  by  way  of  rent,  commission,  and  all  other 
charges. 

The  foregoing  observations  are  meant  to  introduce  the  picture  which  is  here 
exhibited  of  an  Arab  horse-mart.  The  Indian  elements  of  the  tableau  may  be  dis- 
missed without  further  remark.  For  us  the  interest  centres  in  the  kerchiefed  fieures 
round  whom  is  the  air  of  the  Semite  world.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  all  these 
Arab  horse-dealers  belong  to  the  same  category.  Those  of  them  whose  homes  are 
in  Najd  form  one  group  ;  which,  however,  is  composed  of  diverse  members,  from  the 
well-to-do  merchant,  down  to  the  black  slaves  of  Muhammad  ibnu  'r  Ra-shid.  The 
men  from  El  I'rak  are  too  mixed  for  description  ;  and  their  buying-grounds  extend 
from  Zu-bair  and  Bussorah,  by  Suku  'sh  Shu-yukh,  Hilla,  Baghdad,  Der,  and  even 
Tadmur,  to  Aleppo  and  Damascus ;  or  otherwise,  by  Kar-kuk  and  the  Persian 
frontier  to  Mosul  and  Urfa.  And  last,  but  not  least,  there  is  the  great  company 
settled  in  Ku-wait,  the  members  of  which  pride  themselves,  not  without  justice, 
on  their  Arab  exclusiveness,  and  on  bringing  round  only  Arab  horses.  It  should 
not  be  imagined  that  all  this  army,  when  absent  from  India,  disperses  itself  over 
the  Arabian  deserts  in  search  of  horses.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  principle  of  the 
division  of  labour  comes  into  action.  There  are  numerous  thin  fellows  of  small 
capital  who  travel  from  camp  to  camp  of  the  Bedouin,  but  such  men  are  slow  to 
assume  the  role  of  exporters.     Either  the  sight  of  the  sea  at  Bussorah,  or  dread  of  the 


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OF  BUYING  ARABIANS    WHICH  HAVE  BEEN  EXPORTED.  301 

expenses,  inclines  them  to  transfer  their  purchases  en  bloc  to  one  of  the  established 
merchants.  Many  of  the  latter  are  fat  men  and  Hajjis,  who  prefer  the  coffee-house 
bench  to  the  shi-ddd,  or  camel-saddle.  When  they  return  to  their  homes  in  summer, 
after  two  sea-voyages  and  many  months  of  angling  for  purchasers  in  the  Bombay 
stables,  they  like  to  take  life  quietly.  Day  after  day  they  may  be  seen  seated  in  some 
convenient  market-place,  where  every  horse  that  is  brought  into  the  town  will  pass 
before  them.  They  thoroughlj^  understand  that  a  horse  when  well  bought  is  already 
half  sold,  and  the  one  point  which  they  keep  before  them  in  making  their  selections 
is  the  point  oi profit.  The  more  enterprising  of  their  number  will  give  a  hundred 
liras  for  a  colt  which  appears  likely  to  bring  twice  that  sum  in  the  land  of  promise, 
India;  but  the  members  of  the  sure  and  safe  division  prefer  to  buy  half-a-dozen 
horses  with  the  same  money.  Freight  from  Bussorah  to  Bombay  is  about  _^3  a 
horse ;  and  the  cost  of  keep  in  the  commission-stables  seldom  falls  short  of  ^2  a 
head  per  mensem.  According  to  the  jam-bazes'  creed,  Allah  never  made  a  horse 
without  making  a  man  to  buy  him  ;  and  he  who  has  fed  an  unsaleable  animal  for  a 
twelvemonth,  still  retains  his  faith  that  the  appointed  day  when  he  shall  be  sold  will 
come  round.  Nevertheless,  a  colt  must  be  very  superior,  in  order  to  fetch  even 
^100  in  Bombay,  unless  his  owner  be  one  of  those  whose  recommendations  are 
implicitly  believed  in  throughout  a  wide  connection.  Many  a  good  horse,  after 
standing  for  a  long  time  at  some  such  price,  is  sold  for  half  the  sum.  Others  are  put 
back  time  after  time  by  veterinary  surgeons  ;  while  others  die.  With  the  risks  and 
expenses  thus  certain,  and  the  prizes  not  too  many,  there  is  little  wonder  that 
the  jam-bS.zes  are  cautious  buyers.  If  the  small  prices  at  which  they  frequently 
pick  up  good  horses  are  surprising,  the  readiness  of  some  of  them  to  take  the 
merest  castaways  is  equally  so.  Thus  we  lately  sold  to  a  Baghdad  dealer  for  about 
£2,  under  a  guarantee  that  he  should  be  taken  out  of  the  country,  a  fine  upstanding 
Arab,  which  was  twelve  years  old,  a  gelding,  and  broken  down  beyond  the  hope  of 
recovery  or  concealment.  His  was  a  case  for  the  merciful  bullet,  but  oriental  public 
opinion  is  strongly  opposed  to  such  dismissals  ;  and  besides,  he  was  the  property  of 
Government,  and  a  rule  required  that  a  price  should  be  brought  to  book  for  him. 
When  the  honest  Sai-yid  who  bought  him  was  gently  rallied  on  the  copiousness  of 
language  which  it  would  be  necessary  for  him  to  use  in  Bombay  in  order  to  make 
the  rounded  leg  pass  for  the  result  of  an  accident,  he  replied,  with  a  face  which 
Gammon  might  have  copied,  that  although  on  many  subjects  a  lie  might  be  advis- 
able, only  a  reprobate  would  utter  one  about  a  horse  ! 

We  come  back,  however,  to  the  illustration.  A  glance  will  show  how  superior 
are  the  facilities  for  having  a  look  round  which  the  Arab  horse-mart  in  Bombay 
presents.  The  scene  is  an  open-air  one,  and  the  Eastern  sun  or  sky  illuminates  it. 
There  are  no  closed  doors  or  dark  places ;  one  may  ramble  for  hours  among  the 


302  CONCLUSION. 

rows  of  horses  ;  and  at  the  sUghtest  signal  an  Indian  groom  will  lead  out  any  animal 
for  inspection.  Riding-boys  are  in  waiting  to  trot,  canter,  and  gallop  ;  and  in  most 
cases  the  buj^er  will  be  permitted,  before  concluding  the  bargain,  to  mount  his 
selection  and  test  him.  On  the  other  hand,  unfavourable  circumstances  are  not 
wantino-.  One  fact  of  this  kind  soon  confronts  the  new-comer,  and  that  is,  the 
number  of  brokers,  so  to  call  them,  who  are  constantly  waiting  on  the  market. 
Some  of  the  best  judges  of  Arab  horses  that  we  have  ever  known  have  belonged 
to  this  mixed  company  of  Persians,  Arabs,  Parsis,  Indians,  and  others.  These 
people  are  not  infallible  ;  but  the  ring  which  they  form  is  a  recognised  difficulty 
in  the  way  of  the  casual  buyer.  It  is  true  that  any  one  who  pleases  may  obtain 
their  services ;  but  he  who  does  so  without  possessing  an  adequate  stock  of  experi- 
ence on  his  own  part,  is  sure  to  rue  it. 

Nobody  who  would  undertake  to  buy  the  exported  Arabian  for  stud  purposes 
is  likely  to  require  assistance  from  us  in  his  enterprise.  There  are,  however,  two 
other  classes  of  purchasers  to  whom  a  few  hints  may  prove  acceptable — those  who 
only  desire  a  good  Arab  for  common  use,  and  those  whose  affections  are  bound 
up  in  the  contests  of  the  turf 

We  shall  first  speak — 

OF    BUYING    ARABIANS    FOR    ORDINARY    PURPOSES    IN    THE    BOMBAY    STABLES. 

Every  one  desirous  of  possessing  an  Arabian  should  take  care  that  he  does  not 
choose  a  horse  which  is  not  an  Arabian.  In  "famous  London  town"  one  may  buy 
the  "  smallest  toy-terrier  in  the  world";  and  the  pigmy,  when  carried  home  and  set 
down,  may  surprise  its  new  owner  by  turning  out  to  be  a  rat,  and  running  up  the 
bell-rope.  In  the  East,  the  union  of  art  with  nature  has  not  yet  been  perfected  to 
the  same  extent.  When  an  Arab  dealer  leads  out  a  horse,  we  can  at  least  feel 
certain  that  it  is  not  a  disguised  camel.  This  is  good  ;  but  it  stops  short  of  assuring 
us  that  the  steed  is  an  Arabian.  The  Bombay  stables  generally  contain  many 
so-called  Arabs  which  have  never  seen  the  sea,  except  perhaps  in  transit  from  one 
Indian  port  to  another.  Some  of  these  may  be  from  Sindh,  and  others  from  Hirat 
or  Cabul.  When  Amir  Sher  A'li  ruled  Afghanistan,  he  received  as  presents  from 
H.H.  Agha  Khan  of  Bombay  and  others  a  goodly  number  of  first-class  Arabians. 
In  the  Afghan  war  we  saw  many  horses  and  ponies  which  had  been  sired  by  these ; 
and  the  best  of  them  might  have  been  ticketed  as  Arabs,  not  only  at  Islington  but 
at  Poona.  A  supposed  Arab  Galloway  which  twenty  years  ago  shone  on  the  turf 
in  Western  India,  was  ascertained  to  be  what  several  of  his  "points"  suggested,  the 
produce  of  one  of  the  thoroughbred  English  stallions  of  the  Government  stud  depart- 
ment in  the  Bombay  Presidency.      Many  years  ago,  a  young  officer  fresh  from  Eton 


OF  BUYING  ARABIANS    WHICH  HA  VE  BEEN  EXPORTED.  303 

bought  in  Bombay,  as  an  Arab,  a  thoroughbred  AustraHan,  which  after  a  ten  or 
twelve  years'  career  on  the  Madras  turf  had  been  artistically  "  bishopped."  ^  There 
is,  however,  a  certain  something  in  the  look  of  every  horse  of  full  Arabian  lineage 
and  nurture  which  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  mistake. 

It  is  well  known  what  a  sealed  volume  the  horse  is  to  most  men.  Nobody 
can  see  more  in  him  than  that  which  the  eye  from  previous  education  possesses 
the  power  of  seeing.  Therefore,  till  one  become  familiarised  with  the  "  points  "  of 
Arabian  horses,  it  is  highly  necessary,  before  entering  the  Bombay  commission- 
stables,  to  seek  the  assistance  of  an  adept  who  is  not  a  dealer,  but  a  trusty  friend 
and  an  honest  gentleman.  Moreover,  in  the  East  the  law  of  warranty  is  still 
uncertain  ;  and  the  precaution  of  obtaining  a  veterinary  surgeon's  report  on  a 
horse  before  his  price  is  paid  should  never  be  omitted.  A  veterinary  surgeon 
who  is  also  a  horse-dealer  had  better  be  regarded  by  the  public  strictly  in  the 
latter  character.  Honest  Speed's  maxim,  "  If  you  love  her,  you  cannot  see  her," 
is  frequently  illustrated  in  the  Bombay  horse-mart.  He  who  buys  a  colt  merely 
because  he  is  smitten  by  bis  fine  coat  and  manners,  will  probably  repent  it.  As 
long  as  he  keeps  him  chiefly  to  be  fed,  and  groomed,  and  looked  at,  he  will  more 
and  more  admire  him  ;  but  the  proof  is  in  actual  trial.  The  hint  which  Horace 
gives  to  horse-buyers  will  be  remembered  —  namely,  to  throw  a  rug  over  the 
intended  purchase,  so  that  the  eye  may  not  be  drawn  off  defective  legs  by  a  hand- 
some head  and  topping.  Without  presuming  to  enter  a  protest  against  a  practice 
which  boasts  such  high  sanction,  we  cannot  help  recalling  to  mind  that  we  owe  to  it 
a  distinctly  unkind  cut  from  Fortune.  In  1862,  we  had  bought  a  large  grey  colt, 
for  a  moderate  price,  on  the  very  day  of  his  landing  in  Bombay  from  Arabia.  In 
taking  him  to  our  place  of  abode,  we  sent  him,  during  a  break  in  the  railway  journey, 
to  a  certain  forge  ;  and  on  going  there  soon  afterwards,  we  found  him  under  the 
critical  eye  of  one  of  the  most  eminent  professional  judges  of  horses  then  in  India. 
The  hocks  were  the  suspected  parts  ;  and  when  the  Horatian  test  was  applied,  the 
hind-legs  from  the  gaskins  downward  certainly  presented  a  mean  appearance.  Our 
mentor  then  turned  prophet,  and  assured  us  that  the  hocks  would  not  stand  much 
galloping.  Under  this  opinion  the  colt  was  returned  to  his  importer;  and  after  a 
great  career  on  the  turf  as  Jar-ham,  finished  by  winning,  when  about  twenty  years 
old,  the  principal  hog-hunters'  stakes  of  Northern  India.  One  experience  of  this 
kind  is  sufficient.      No  more  covering  up  of  horses  for  us  when   they  are  being 


^  Some  of  our  readers  may  never  have  heard  of 
the  operation  of  "  bishopping,"  which  is  called  after  a 


coloured   black   by  means  of  a  hot  iron.      Animals 
which  have  been  thus  treated  are  palmed  off  on  the 


knave  of  the  name  of  Bishop.    In  horses  of  from  eight  inexperienced  as  six  or  seven.   The  Bedouin  are  guilt- 

to  twelve  years'  old,  a  small  cavity  is  scooped  in  the  less  of  all   such   practices  ;   but   not  so  the   Syrian, 

wearing  surface  of  two  or  more  of  the  teeth,  and     1     I'raki,  and  Persian  jam-bizes. 


304  CONCLUSION. 

inspected.  It  is  higlily  necessary  to  observe  not  only  the  several  parts,  but  the 
proportion  which  all  the  parts  bear  to  one  another.  To  sum  up  :  a  well-bred  horse, 
such  as  good  judges  would  approve  of  if  he  were  not  an  Arab,  is  the  sort  to  look 
for.  He  must  be  sound,  and  not  one  which  other  people  have  ridden  to  a  stump. 
It  is  useless  for  a  12-stone  man  to  buy  a  horse  which  can  never  be  master  of 
more  than  10  stone.  Ait.  reste,  if  the  fore-legs  are  straight,  the  feet  of  the  proper 
form,  and  the  action  bold  and  free,  he  will  not  be  a  bad  one.  Plenty  of  horses  of 
this  description  are  to  be  found.  In  the  East  it  is  the  good  judges  of  horses  who 
are  scarce,  and  not  the  sfood  horses. 

Let  us  next  survey  the  more  difficult  subject — 

OF    BUYING   ARABIANS    FOR    THE    TURF    IN    THE    BOMBAY    STABLES. 

Few  pastimes  prove  more  attractive  to  Englishmen  in  India  than  the  training 
of  Arabs.  For  a  century  and  a  half,  the  black  coat  and  the  red,  the  bench  and  the 
bar,  the  commercial  establishment  and  the  editor's  sanctum,  have  here  found  common 
ground.  Some  one  has  said  of  children  that  they  are  "  very  certain  cares  and  very 
uncertain  pleasures";  and  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  is  equally  true  of  horses  in 
training,  though  perhaps  less  so  in  the  case  of  Arabs  than  of  other  breeds.  But  in 
spite  of  philosophers,  the  owner  of  a  good  horse  loves  the  excitement  of  matching  him 
against  another.  Racing  in  India  has  undergone  great  changes  in  the  last  twenty 
years.  The  railways  have  produced  an  unfavourable  effect  on  the  smaller  meetings, 
in  which,  formerly,  local  animals  were  the  chief  competitors.  They  have  also 
stopped  the  supplies  of  Arabs  which  the  travelling  dealers  used  to  keep  in  circula- 
tion. Bombay  is  now  the  only  place  in  India  where  fresh  Arabs  are  to  be  bought, 
except  casually  ;  and  racing  draAvs  more  and  more  to  certain  centres.  It  is  also 
said  that  the  number  of  those  who  like  to  see  a  orood  race  for  its  own  sake  is  de- 
creasing.  The  large  sum  of  more  than  Rs.  90,000  of  added  money,  exclusive  of 
numerous  valuable  trophies,  which  is  advertised  in  the  programme  of  the  Calcutta 
Races  for  1891-92,^  certainly  looks  like  business.  But  we  have  never  heard  of  any 
one  who  made  a  fortune,  whether  by  a  cotip  or  gradually,  on  the  turf  in  India.  Even 
at  Calcutta,  the  betting-ring  is  cast  in  a  different  mould  from  that  of  Epsom.  The 
steamer  companies  now  take  out  annually  a  small  flight  of  book-makers  ;  but  there 
are  no  welshers,  and  the  ring-men  are  more  of  the  rook  kind  than  the  vulture. 
The  real  beak-whetters  do  not  drop  down  on  a  country  where,  for  them  at  least, 
there  is   less    of  flesh    than    feathers.     Men  of   high    position    among   the    native 


1  The  Rs.  90,000  (equal,  at  the  exchange  of  the  day,     I     of  racing,  including  two  days'  steeplechasing. 
to   about  £7000  sterling)   is  spread  over  eight  days     I 


OF  BUYING  ARABIANS    WHICH  HAVE  BEEN  EXPORTED.  305 

Indians  do  not  gamble  away  their  patrimonies.  Englislimen  who  have  ancestral 
homes  to  mortgage,  and  who  are  ready  to  risk  them  on  a  horse  and  jockey,  have  no 
occasion  to  cross  the  sea  in  order  to  do  so.  But,  passing  from  these  painful  features, 
every  one  who  pursues  a  manly  sport  loves  to  excel  in  it ;  and  this  leads  us  to  draw 
attention  to  the  difficulty  which  our  countrymen  in  India  experience  in  obtaining  un- 
tried Arabs  such  as  will  not  discredit  them  when  brought  to  the  starting-post.  In 
spite  of  the  circumstance  that  the  common  run  of  the  jam-bazes'  horses  are  three  years 
old  and  upwards,  he  who  essays  to  pick  a  racer  from  among  them  is  as  likely  to  suffer 
disappointment  as  the  purchaser  of  yearlings  is  in  England.  Or  rather,  he  is  more 
likely  to  do  so.  Every  colt  and  filly  that  steps  into  the  sale-ring  at  Doncaster  or 
Newmarket  possesses  at  least  an  undeniable  pedigree.  The  collections  of  the  Arab 
dealers,  on  the  contrary,  always  contain  a  large  number  of  animals  which,  as  far  as 
racing  is  concerned,  might  as  well  be  mules.  There  are  many  persons  who,  through 
attentive  study,  have  more  or  less  acquired  the  power  of  recognising,  by  the  eye 
alone,  in  the  Bombay  stables,  that  this  colt  from  his  breeding,  build,  and  action, 
may  prove  a  race-horse,  and  that  it  is  impossible  for  that  other  colt  to  do  so.  Of 
course  this  is  a  step,  and  an  important  step  ;  but  nothing  short  of  actual  trial  can 
convert  the  may  into  a  certainty.  Even  the  specialised  racing-stock  of  England 
yields,  according  to  Admiral  Rous's  calculation,  only  about  three  remarkable  runners 
out  of  two  thousand.  From  one  and  the  same  mare,  a  Bay  Middleton  will  one 
year  get  a  Flying  Dutchman,  and  another  year  a  mediocrity  like  Vanderdecken. 
That  is  to  say,  many  of  the  best-bred  and  best-looking  horses  are  foaled  without 
the  gift  of  speed ;  and  no  time  or  training  can  impart  what  Nature  has  denied. 
Every  man  who  buys  young  horses  experiences  the  truth  of  this. 

"  Oft  expectation  fails,  and  most  oft  there 
Where  most  it  promises ;  and  oft  it  hits 
Wliere  hope  is  coldest,  and  despair  most  sits."  ^ 

Our  present  argument  does  not  depend  on  mere  chance  occurrences ;  and  we 
shall  not  lay  stress  on  cases  in  which  the  best  Arab  horse  of  the  season  has  been 
thrust  by  fortune  on  a  novice.  Sa'-dt  says  that  Sometimes  a  good  result  does 
not  proceed  from  the  clear-sighted  expert ;  and  sometimes  the  ignorant  boy  hits  the 
mark  with  an  arrozu  by  mistake?  Accordingly,  a  youth  whose  self-assurance  pushes 
him  through  thick  places,  as  his  budding  horns  do  the  billy-goat,  may  step  off  a 
troopship,  walk  into  a  dealer's  yard,  and  purchase  the  conquering  hero  of  the  coming 
season.  Many  years  ago,  an  artillery  subaltern,  fired  with  a  "noble  rage"  to  play 
the  great  game,  went  to  Bombay  to  buy  a  couple  of  Arabs.  Of  the  two  which  he 
selected,  one  was  said  to  be  a  scion  of  the  "  Ishmaelite,"  or  pre-Ishmaelite,  strain 

1  "All's  Well  that  ends  Well,"  Act  ii.  sc.  i.  |  -  "  Gul-istan." 

2  Q 


306  CONCLUSION. 

called  Ba-ndtu  V  a-zvaj,  or  Da^ighters  of  the  Defoinned ;  and  several  of  the  jam- 
bizes  declared  that  they  knew  his  foster-camel !  The  other  was  merely  taken  along 
with  him,  like  the  cat  with  the  dromedary  in  the  Arabian  tale.  The  result  was,  that 
the  highly  esteemed  one  never  earned  a  feed  of  corn ;  while  his  stable  companion, 
after  having  been  in  vain  offered  for  sale  at  a  small  price,  made  a  great  turf  record 
as  Red  Hazard.  Instances  of  this  kind,  if  they  stood  alone,  would  hardly  be  worth 
citing ;  for  there  is  no  branch  of  sport  or  business  in  which  what  are  called  "  flukes  " 
do  not  happen.  It  will  better  serve  to  illustrate  our  immediate  subject  if  we  here 
adduce  a  few  typical  cases,  in  which  the  most  experienced  judges  of  Arab  horses 
have  been  concerned. 

The  two  Arabs,  Minuet  and  Child  of  the  Islands,  still  represent  the  Castor  and 
Pollux  of  Anglo-Indian  racing  story.  At  all  weights  not  exceeding  9  st.  7  lb.  the 
"terrible  Child"  was  indisputably  the  best  Arab  which  had  appeared  up  to  that 
date  on  the  Indian  turf.  Lieut.-Col.  Bower  ^  was  the  first  purchaser  of  those  two 
horses  after  their  arrival  in  India ;  and  the  following  is  his  description  of  the  circum- 
stances in  which  they  became  his  property  : — 

"In  1845  an  emergent  indent  from  the  Government  of  India  on  Madras  for  six  hundred 
horses  to  replace  vacancies  in  the  Army  on  the  Sutlej,  cleared  the  dealers'  lots  of  everything 
fit  for  a  trooper,  and  saved  those  poor  people  from  bankruptcy  ;  but  there  was  no  sale  for 
their  high-priced  cattle,  and  it  was  with  the  market  in  that  disordered  state  that  I  offered  four- 
teen hundred  rupees  for  a  sturdy  three-year-old,  whom,  from  his  smooth  easy  style  of  moving, 
I  named  Minuet. 

"  In  another  lot  there  stood  a  very  blood-like  colt  of  the  same  age,  but  with  such  peculiar 
action  that  several  good  judges  doubted  his  soundness,  and  indeed  a  veterinary  surgeon 
thought  him  weak  in  the  loins.  I  offered  one  thousand  rupees  for  the  cripple,  for  better  or  for 
worse  !  My  offer  was  then  refused,  but,  after  a  lapse  of  three  months,  the  dealer  came  to  me 
and  said  he  had  sold  all  his  horses  except  the  colt  I  had  offered  for,  and  as  nobody  would  buy 
him,  he  would  gladly  take  whatever  I  pleased  to  give  him,  as  he  was  anxious  to  get  rid  of 
the  animal,  that  he  might  return  to  Bombay.  My  answer  was  that  I  would  adhere  to  my 
original  offer  of  a  thousand  rupees,  which  was  at  last  accepted  ;  and  as  I  happened  to  be 
reading  Mrs  Norton's  pretty  little  poem  at  the  time  the  colt  arrived,  I  named  him  The  Child 
of  the  Islands."  2 

Few  Europeans  have  enjoyed  better  opportunities  of  becoming  judges  of  the 
Arabian  horse  than  the  late  Dr  Campbell  of  Mysore,  the  owner  of  Greyleg.^  In 
1856  or  1857  he  received,  as  one  of  a  lot,  from  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab  of  Bombay,  a  rich 
bay  colt,  about  14  hands  and  i  inch  at  the  withers,  which,  the  longer  he  looked  at  him, 
the  less  he  liked.  He  considered  the  head  plain,  the  neck  thick,  and  the  shoulder 
straight,  and  was  inclined  to  cast  him.  When  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab  heard  of  this,  he 
wrote  to  the  doctor  asking  him  for  his  sake  to  put  the  colt  in  training.     After  a  few 


1  V.  ante,  p.  198  et  f.n.  3. 

2  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  26,  pp.  \ii  et  ii'^ 


3   V.  ante,  pp.  254-256. 


OF  BUYING  ARABIANS    WHICH  HA  VE  BEEN  EXPORTED. 


307 


gallops,  the  denounced  one,  in  a  trial,  covered  a  mile  in  i  minute  and  54  seconds. 
There  was  no  longer  any  talk  of  the  "  bull  neck  "  and  "  Roman  nose,"  but  of  the 
"strong  loin  and  quarter,"  "good  eyes,"  "brave  look,"  and  "easy  creeping  style  of 
action."  ^  A  present  of  .^500  was  sent  to  the  old  dealer,  in  reward  for  his  advice ; 
and  in  due  time  all  India  heard  of  the  performances  of  Copenhagen.- 

Another  brilliant  Arab  which  at  first  had  few  admirers  was  Honeysuckle. 
For  two  years  people  looked  upon  the  little  grey  as  "  mean  in  his  hind-quarters," 
and  "not  a  taking  goer  to  the  eye,  in  any  of  his  paces."  When  he  was  beaten  in 
the  Calcutta  Derby  of  1846-47,  the  race-goers  never  expected  to  see  him  again.  It 
is,  however,  interesting  to  notice  that,  while  such  was  the  general  opinion,  an  old 
Arab  horse-dealer,  by  name  Shekh  Ib-ra-him,  protested  against  it  like  a  prophet. 
On  hearing  his  favourite  disparaged,  the  veteran  would  say,  "  Very  well,  gentlemen, 
you  will  see  what  a  horse  he  will  prove ; "  and  when,  in  the  course  of  a  year  or  two, 
Honeysuckle  became  the  pride  of  Indian  racing  circles,  there  never  was  a  fairer  "  I 
told  you  so  "  than  the  Shekh's. 

Some  may  infer  from  the  two  last-cited  cases  that  the  Arab  dealers  are  better 
judges  of  their  merchandise  than  their  European  customers  are ;  but  the  facts 
scarcely  warrant  so  sweeping  a  conclusion.  Both  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab  and  Shekh 
Ib-ra-him  were,  in  their  way,  celebrities.  After  making  a  little  money,  they  had, 
more  or  less,  settled  down — the  former  in  Bombay  and  the  latter  in  Calcutta. 
They  received  their  horses  from  agents,  or  relations,  in  Arabia.  They  did  not 
confine  themselves  to  dealing,  but  added  racing  to  it.  Their  natural  faith  m  blood 
doubtless  prevented  them  from  too  lightly  condemning  those  horses  which  they 
knew  to  be  of  high  lineage.  But  for  once  that  this  system  proves  advan- 
tageous to  the  Oriental,  it  twenty  times  leads  him  to  persevere  with  worthless 
animals.  The  Arab  dealers,  when  they  engage  in  racing,  certainly  make  as 
many  misses  as  hits.  Sportsmen  who  have  been  in  India  may  remember  the 
late  A'bdu  'r  Rah-man  and  Esau  bin  Curtas,^  the  former  of  whom,  by  birth  a 
townsman  of  Najd,  was  for  many  years  quite  at  the  top  of  the  Arab  horse- 
trade  in  Bombay.  Both  these  men  were  devoted  to  racing,  and  trained  and 
tried  as  many  as  possible  of  the  inmates  of  their  several  stables  before  letting 
other  people  have  them.  Their  natural  wits  were  sharpened  by  intercourse  with 
Europeans  ;  and,  apart  from  their  too  fixed  ideas  about  blood,  they  really  were  un- 
commonly good  judges.  And  yet,  if  they  were  still  living,  they  would  have  much 
to  confess  on  the  side  of  the  present  argument.  The  best  racing  Arab  that  A'bdu 
'r  Rah-man  ever   owned   was  Young  Revenge ;    and  what  did  he  do  with   him  1 


1  Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  38,  vol.  iii.  pp.  13-24. 
^  V.  ante,  p.  20S. 


V.  ante,  pp.  228,  248,  270. 


3o8  CONCLUSION. 

Why,  despatched  him,  untried,  to  a  military  ofificer  in  a  distant  cantonment,  who, 
when  he  saw  him,  returned  him  !  Similarly,  Esau  bin  Curtas,  a  few  years  ago, 
allowed  another  uncut  diamond  to  escape  him — in  this  case  for  ever.  One  day 
there  was  offered  to  him  at  Bussorah  a  rough  colt,  which  an  Arab  had  brought  in 
from  the  Mun-ta-fik.  Esau  bought  him  cheap,  for  he  was  but  a  pony,  and  sent  him 
to  Bombay.  He  stood  there  for  several  months,  with  all  the  wise  men  looking  him 
over  and  refusing  him,  till  at  last  a  subaltern  bought  him  for  about  £']o.  Not  to  be 
tedious,  behold,  as  the  hero  of  our  story.  Blitz,  twice  the  winner  of  the  richest  turf 
prize  in  Northern  India,  the  Civil  Service  Cup,  for  ponies !  He  all  but  won  the 
same  race  a  third  time,  and  Avas  only  just  beaten  for  it  by  the  English  pony  Mike, 
to  whom  he  gave  2  stone  8  lb.  of  weight.  After  the  latter  performance  Blitz 
changed  ownership  for  the  substantial  equivalent  of  Rs.  20,000.  Facts  like  these  are 
greatly  dwelt  on  by  the  jam-bazes.  It  stands  to  reason  that  if  these  people  knew 
the  merits  of  all  their  horses,  nobody  would  ever  get  a  Young  Revenge  or  a  Blitz 
from  them.  With  little  or  no  book-learning,  they  possess  a  fine  natural  eloquence, 
which  many  of  their  number  have  acquired  the  power  of  expressing  in  persuasive 
English.  It  is  a  part  of  their  business  to  uphold  the  idea  that  every  fresh  colt  in 
their  possession  may  be  a  winning  ticket  in  the  lottery  of  the  turf.  In  leading 
out,  for  instance,  a  muleteer's  baggage-pony,  if  any  one  should  call  him  "  coarse,"  they 
have  the  answer  ready  that  Copenhagen  was  "  fiddle-headed,"  or  that  some  other 
distinguished  runner  was  either  bought  out  of  a  buggy,  or  was  pronounced  by  the 
best  judges,  before  his  real  quality  was  ascertained,  only  fit  to  carry  boxes.  It  is  all 
very  well  for  Arab  horse-dealers  thus  to  build  castles  on  the  sandy  foundation  of 
sheer  accident ;  but  when  an  Englishman  does  so,  it  is  a  symptom  that  his  power 
of  calculating  chances  has  become  impaired. 

The  foregoing  remarks,  it  will  be  observed,  apply  to  the  selection  oi fresh,  that 
is,  newly  imported,  Arabians.  There  is  a  charm  in  unstrung  pearls  which  appeals 
to  every  one  ;  and  in  the  olden  time  in  India,  many  sportsmen  disdained  to  buy 
horses  that  had  carried  other  men's  colours.  To  race  on  these  terms  implies  a 
long  purse  and  an  open  hand — two  things  which  are  not  always  conjoined.  It 
is  said  that  barbers,  when  they  want  two  or  three  razors  for  use,  purchase  a 
score,  and  after  trying  them,  keep  the  superior  ones  and  sell  the  rest  at  cost 
price.  Sportsmen  in  India  who  aim  at  winning  the  maiden  Arab  races,  adopt 
more  or  less  the  same  practice ;  but  their  discarded  horses  are  not  so  easily 
sold  at  cost  price  as  razors  are.  A  member  of  the  Melbourne  turf,  who,  up 
to  about  ten  years  ago,  devoted  half  his  time  to  India,  grew  so  tired  of  year 
after  year  selecting  fresh  Arabs  which  won  no  races,  that  he  would  buy  no 
more    except  after  a    trial   against    a  stop-watch.       In    the   days    when   the  Arab 


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OF  BUYING  ARABIANS    WHICH  HAVE  BEEN  EXPORTED.  309. 

horses  were  brought  to  Bombay  in  sailing-vessels,  and  took  several  months 
to  recover  their  strength  after  the  voyage,  this  practice  could  not  be  carried 
to  any  great  extent ;  but  the  jam-bazes  of  the  present  time  readily  lend  them- 
selves to  it.  Every  morning  they  take  out  their  raw  colts,  which  ought  to 
be  at  walking  exercise,  and  gallop  them.  When  a  purchaser  comes  forward, 
they  offer  to  try  one  or  more  of  them  for  a  mile,  or  even  a  mile  and  a  half 
A  large  price  is  mutually  agreed  on  beforehand,  subject  to  the  chronometer's 
verdict,  and  many  a  deal  is  thus  effected.  In  a  purely  business  aspect,  this 
arrangement  may  possess  advantages  ;  but  it  is  unfair  to  the  horses,  and  it  savours 
more  of  the  "sporting  man"  than  of  the  sportsman.  Side  by  side  with  the  ad- 
mitted difficulty  of  choosing,  apart  from  trial,  Arabs  which  will  show  racing  form, 
the  fact  should  be  kept  in  view  that  many  of  our  countrymen  and  others  have 
learned  to  do  so — not  of  course  invariably,  or  without  risk  of  error,  but  in  a  higher 
degree  than  it  is  possible  to  ascribe  to  mere  "  luck  "  or  accident. 

Through  the  kindness  of  a  well-known  sportsman.  Major  Elliot  of  the  ist  Bom- 
bay Lancers,  we  are  enabled  to  introduce  here  a  couple  of  portraits  which  bear 
witness  to  the  correctness  of  the  foregoing  statement.  The  fame  of  Euclid  and 
Lanercost  is  still  fresh.  The  former  is  now  at  stud  in  Hungary,  and  the  latter  is  in 
the  possession  of  that  prince  of  straight  riders,  H.H.  the  Maharajah  of  Dhole- 
pore,- in  Central  India.  Major  Elliot  bought  both  colts  in  two  successive  seasons, 
immediately  after  they  had  been  brought  to  Bombay  from  Ku  -  wait  by  their 
importer,  Ha-san  bin  Badr.  The  prices  which  he  paid  for  them  were,  Rs.  1200 
for  Euclid,  and  Rs.  1000  for  Lanercost.  At  that  time  they  were  but  raw  colts,  and 
each  in  his  own  year  won,  as  a  three-year-old,  a  severe  two-mile  race.  While  truly 
forming  a.  par  nobile  fratrum,  they  are  not,  so  far  as  is  known,  related  to  one  another. 
Hasan  had  no  other  history  to  give  of  them  than  that  he  had  obtained  them  from 
the  Aeniza.  He  and  many  others  of  his  class  are  worthy  men,  and  good  judges 
of  horses ;  but  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  they  can  foretell  the  racing  quali- 
fications of  an  untried  colt.  Questions  of  this  kind  should  always  be  addressed 
through  the  eye  to  the  animal  itself,  and  not  through  the  tongue  to  its  importer. 

For  the  sportsman  who  possesses  neither  a  large  bank  balance  nor  twenty 
years  of  experience,  there  is  a  way  in  which  the  taste  for  training  and  running 
Arabs  may  be  gratified  without  the  risks  being  formidable ;  and  that  is,  by  leaving 
on  one  side  the  "  maiden,"  or  weigh t-for-age,  races,  and  beginning  with  a  proved 
cup-horse.  He  who  is  still  in  his  novitiate  may  find  it  a  surer  plan  to  give  Rs. 
3000,  or  even  more,  for  one  Arab  which  has  fought  his  way  to  fame,  without 
being  "  done  to  a  turn,"  as  the  phrase  is,  in  the  process,  than  to  expend  an  equal 
sum  in  the  purchase  of  untried  colts.  The  author  can  here  speak  from  experience. 
When  he  was   a  beginner,   and   stationed  at   Hyderabad,   a  purse   of  ;^i5o    was 


3IO  CONCLUSION. 

presented  by  H.H.  Agha  Khan,  to  be  run  for  at  the  local  meeting.  The  Agha 
sent  several  of  his  best  Arabs  to  contend  for  this  and  the  other  prizes ;  and 
along  with  them,  a  number  of  castaways  to  be  sold.  One  of  the  latter — a  good 
old  plater — became  ours  at  an  easy  price.  Two  months  afterwards  he  won  for 
us  his  late  owner's  gift-money,  beating  the  champion  horse  of  the  Agha's  stable ! 
It  may  be  said  that  this  is  mere  "leather-plating";  but  there  is  nothing  deroga- 
tory in  a  man  playing  in  a  humble  way,  when  his  means  do  not  permit  him  to 
do  more.  Those  who  have  their  place  "on  the  mountain-tops  of  existence,"  whose 
wealth  is  ample,  and  who  consider  it  a  part  of  their  proper  state  to  maintain  a 
racing  stud,  may  care  little  about  financial  considerations.  But  speaking  of 
ordinary  gentlemen,  they  cannot,  on  the  one  hand,  follow  this  amusement  on  a 
scale  which  necessitates  their  winning  money,  without  imminent  risk  of  assuming 
the  characteristics  of  a  different  class  of  people  altogether ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  only  natural  for  them  to  appreciate  their  winnings,  were  it  but  as  proofs 
of  good  judgment,  and,  above  all,  of  that  perfect  self-command,  apart  from  which 
the  harmless  stretch  of  green  turf  is  apt  to  prove  the  broad  road  to  ruin.  The 
pace  can  gradually  be  increased.  But  even  when  it  is  contemplated  to  enter 
for  the  valuable  prizes  reserved  in  Western  India  for  maiden  Arabs,  one  may 
choose  between  buying  the  raw  material  from  the  importers,  and  looking  out 
for  one  or  two  horses  which,  although  they  have  failed,  so  far,  to  secure  a 
winning  number,  have  run  well  in  good  company.  The  advantage  of  the 
latter  plan  is,  that  it  follows  public  form — in  horses,  as  in  men,  the  soundest 
test  of  merit.  Some  may  say  that  it  proceeds  on  the  idea  of  one  man  being 
able  to  do  that  which  others  have  failed  to  do.  Admittedly  this  objection 
would  carry  weight  in  England.  A  colt  which  one  of  our  great  trainers  has 
discarded  is  not  very  likely  to  turn  out  well  in  other  hands.  But  the  case 
is  different  in  India.  It  is  more  than  half  a  century  since  the  art  of  training 
took  there  a  great  start  in  advance,  and  it  has  been  kept  well  abreast  of  modern 
changes.  Nevertheless,  it  is  very  unequal.  In  most  fields  there  will  be  one  or 
two  candidates  as  well  prepared  for  the  contest  as  if  Mr  Day  were  answerable 
for  them,  and  there  will  be  others  which  are  less  so.  Hence,  in  India,  con- 
dition first,  and  riding  second,  win  between  them  more  races,  perhaps,  than  in- 
trinsic form  does.  Far  more  frequently  than  in  England,  a  Stockwell  may  there 
be  seen  finishing  behind  a  Daniel  O'Rourke,  as  in  our  1852  Derby.  No  doubt, 
this  increases  the  opportunities  of  making  what  are  termed  "lucky"  purchases  of 
beaten  horses — though  the  luck  consists  in  one's  having  the  power  of  combining 
circumstances,  and  seeing  behind  mere  appearances.  It  is,  however,  most 
necessary  to  remember  that  there  are  Arabs  which,  the  longer  that  they  are 
persevered  with,  grow  the  slower ;    as  well  as   others  which,  for  want  of  finish- 


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OF  BUYING  ARABIANS    WHICH  HAVE  BEEN  EXPORTED.  311 

ino-  powers,  or  perhaps  through  fear  of  punishment,  cannot,  or  will  not,  run  up 
into  the  first  place.  A  horse  that  is  always  finishing  second  is  anything  but  a 
blessing  in  disguise. 

We  shall  conclude  this  section  with  a  reference  to  certain  indications,  to  be 
seen  in  exported  Arabians,  in  which  there  is  guidance  for  those  who  understand 
them ;  while  others  either  pass  them  over  or  invest  them  with  absurd  meanings. 

Occasionally,  then,  there  will  be  a  gelding  in  a  lot  of  exports.  It  is  impossible 
to  make  this  condition  support  an  inference  in  regard  to  the  animal's  history. 
First,  caution  is  necessary  before  accepting  it  as  certain  that  he  is  a  fresh  arrival,  and 
not  an  old  buggy-horse,  for  which  a  jam-biz  has  consented  to  stand  sponsor !  Such 
things  happen.  But  perhaps  he  is  a  rejection  from  the  establishment  of  a  European 
Consul  in  El  I'rak  or  Syria;  and  if  so,  he  may  be  anything.  Or,  if  his  back  is 
scarred  from  the  withers  to  the  croup,  and  if  he  is  a  clean-bred  one,  he  may  have 
been  carrying  the  iron  hobbles  {ka-did),  and  other  gear,  of  a  party  of  horse-dealers, 
who- have  altered  him  to  admit  of  his  being  turned  out  to  feed  when  they  halted. 
In  that  case  he  is  probably  a  "  has-been."  Racing  form  is  not  promoted  by  a  course 
of  drudgery  and  load-carrying,  any  more  than,  in  men,  the  labours  of  a  heavy 
porter  tend  to  make  a  Deerfoot.  Nevertheless,  a  horse  of  his  description  may 
prove  a  treasure  to  those  who,  like  Chaucer's  knight,  would  have  a  nag  "  good, 
albeit  not  gay";  for  work  has  hardened  him,  and,  if  not  too  old,  he  will  improve. 
Or,  lastly,  the  unsexed  one  may  have  come  from  the  desert.  A  ghaz-u  rider  may 
have  taken  him  in  foray,  and  treated  him  thus,  either  because  unable  to  ascertain 
his  pedigree,  or  because  he  has  lost  his  mare  and  would  mount  himself  in  this 
manner.  Such  a  history,  supposing  it  to  be  well  established,  is  satisfactory ;  but 
to  agree  with  it,  the  back  must  not  be  scarred  all  over,  like  a  mule's.  The 
whitening  of  the  hair  must  follow,  more  or  less,  the  outline  of  the  Bedouin  saddle. 
A  gelding  is  easier  to  train  than  a  horse,  and  is  less  apt  to  jump  about  and  injure 
his  legs  at  walking  exercise. 

Enough  has  been  said  in  another  place  of  the  marks  of  firing.  The  dealers 
encourage  the  notion  that  such  are  distinctive  of  the  Bedouin  horses  ;  but  their  talk 
rests  upon  air.  One  of  the  secrets  of  the  Arab  and  Persian  muleteers  is  to  use  mare 
mules  which  will  follow  their  owner's  ridingf-horse.  The  caravaner's  hack  is  gen- 
erally  a  good  one.  When  the  object  is  to  earn  the  day's  hire  easily,  he  is  loaded 
up  with  chopped  straw  or  barley,  and  allowed  to  fall  behind.  No  amount  of  driv- 
ing will  then  make  the  she-mules  in  front  of  him  step  out.  But  when  the  muleteer 
really  desires  to  get  over  the  ground,  he  mounts  his  hack  and  pushes  on  ahead. 
The  caravan,  or  kd-fi-la,  will  then  flit  across  the  desert,  almost  like  a  ghaz-u.  Not- 
withstanding the  mule's  having  but  a  jack's  leg  from  the  knee  down,  we  have  never 


312 


CONCLUSION. 


seen  one  with  a  splint.  At  other  points,  also,  this  animal  either  escapes  unsound- 
nesses which  afflict  the  horse,  or,  owing  to  his  lower  sensibility,  takes  them  more 
lio-htly.  But  when  a  horse  is  set  to  lead  a  string  of  mules,  he  soon  requires  the 
firing-iron.  Hence,  even  apart  from  questions  of  soundness,  he  who  buys  in  India 
or  Egypt  a  horse  which  has  been  fired  is,  so  far  as  this  sign  goes,  as  likely  to  have 
chosen  a  Persian  ka-dish  as  an  Arabian. 

Sometimes  the  strings  of  the  jam-bazes  contain  full-mouthed  horses  on  which 
there  is  no  scar  or  blemish.  Such  may  be  very  nice  young  gentlemen,  but  the 
traces  of  a  public  school,  so  to  speak,  are  wanting  in  them.  When  we  find 
them,  at  the  same  time,  light  below  the  knee,  and  happiest  when  their  heads  are 
turned  homeward,  we  need  not  wonder. 

Nine  Arab  horses  out  of  ten  will,  at  the  very  least,  show  a  couple  of  scars  at 
the  roots  of  the  ears.  Our  countrymen  value  these  marks  ;  and  we  daresay  that 
the  jam-b^zes  make  them  when  they  chance  to  be  absent.  But  nearly  all  Arab, 
Kurdi,  and  Persian  horses  have  them.  They  indicate  no  more  than  that  a  horse  is 
not  English,  or  Australian,  or  Indian.  One  of  the  points  which  Eastern  horsemen 
cannot  be  brought  to  admire  in  European  horses  is  the  excessive  spread  of  the 
ears.  When  the  milk-selling  Arabs  of  El  I'rak  are  pasturing  their  sheep  round 
Baghdad  in  spring,  the  donkey-foals  may  be  seen  running  about  with  their  long 
ears  drawn  together,  both  at  the  roots  and  tips,  with  pack-thread  stitches,  to  give 
them  the  desired  set.  Many  of  the  Bedouin  nations  of  the  Euphrates  apply  the 
same  treatment  to  the  roots  at  least,  if  not  also  to  the  tips,  of  the  ears  in  newly 
dropped  colts  and  fillies.^  Nevertheless,  our  Aleppo  colleague  informs  us  that 
marked  ears  are  comparatively  rare  in  the  best  desert  horses  of  the  upper  Euphrates  ; 
and  that,  when  they  occur,  they  merely  signify  that  the  parts  have  been  slightly 
cauterised  in  early  colthood  as  a  cure  for  a  cold  in  the  head,  or  for  strangles. 

The  fact  should  be  remembered  that  every  vendor  of  an  unknown  Arabian  will, 
if  possible,  represent  him  as  coming  from  the  desert.  In  markets  outside  of  Arabia 
it  is  comparatively  easy  to  put  forward  this  description.  In  proof  of  it,  some  casual 
blemish  will  be  paraded  as  a  spear-wound.  Even  the  collar-marks  on  the  shoulders 
of  a  ka-dlsh  fresh  from  the  tram-cars  which  run  between  Baghdad  and  Ka-dhi-main 
are  occasionally  made  the  basis  of  a  romantic  story.  In  the  same  way,  when  little 
lines  like  lancet  marks  have  been  produced  on  the  flanks  of  the  commonest  hack  by 
the  sharp  corners  of  the  townsman's  stirrup,  they  are  apt  to  be  described  as  traces  of 
spurring  in  Al  ghaz-u  ! 


1  Burckhardt  says,  in  Notes  on  the  Bedouin  and 
Wahabys,  vol.  i.  p.  209  :  "  Immediately  after  the  birth 
of  a  colt,  the  Arabs  tie  its  ears  together  over  its  head 
with  a  thread,  that  they  may  assume  a  fine  pointed 


direction  ;  at  the  same  time  they  press  the  tail  of  the 
colt  upwards,  and  take  other  measures  whereby  it  may 
be  carried  high."     V.  ante,  p.  251. 


OF  BUYING  ARABIANS    WHICH  HAVE  BEEN  EXPORTED.  313 

Another  series  of  skin  and  hair  marks  depend  on  the  various  modes  of  tying 
horses,  in  countries  where  hobbling  is  more  in  vogue  than  stabling.  In  Persia  dif- 
ferent tribes  follow  different  usages  in  this  matter.  Marks  of  tying  round  both  fore- 
arms, or  fore-pasterns,  or  from  a  fore  to  a  hind  pastern,  or  from  a  forearm  to  a 
gaskin,  suggest  localities  in  which  the  Arab  rash-ma,  or  riding-halter,  is  not  preva- 
lent. For  the  desert  Arab  invariably  ties  his  mare,  and  the  traveller  in  Arabia  his 
riding  nag,  during  short  halts,  by  bringing  the  halter-rope  from  the  head,  between 
the  fore-legs,  to  above  the  near  hock,  and  knotting  it  there.  In  this  way  raws  are 
established,  first  across  the  near  gaskin,  and  then  perhaps  across  the  off  one  also— 
for  the  latter  takes  its  turn  of  the  knot  when  its  fellow  is  too  much  cut  to  bear  it. 
The  more  or  less  permanent  scar  which  is  thus  caused  is  termed  by  the  Arabs 
a  shgdr.  The  extraordinary  thing  is,  that  these  traces  above  one  or  both  hocks, 
though  merely  due  to  a  particular  mode  of  tying,  are  regarded  in  India  as  cabalistic 
signs  of  turf  promise!  So  far  back  as  1831,  they  were  known  in  Bombay  as  "the 
Fort  Adjutant's  marks,"  because  a  certain  officer  of  the  garrison  who  held  that  ap- 
pointment, and  who  was  noted  for  his  power  of  selecting  Arabs  which  proved  winners, 
attached  the  highest  importance  to  them  !  In  the  above-mentioned  year  a  local 
writer,  possessed  of  an  inquiring  mind,  drew  attention  to  this  blemish  in  the  pages 
of  the  Oriental  Sporting  Magazine}  He  scoffed  at  the  idea  of  a  mere  rope-mark 
bearing  any  significance ;  and  to  make  good  his  point,  produced  a  roll  of  thirty-eight 
famous  Arab  race-horses,  nineteen  of  which  had,  and  nineteen  had  not,  this  coat  of 
arms.  Some  may  think  that  this  common-sense  criticism  must  have  accomplished 
the  desired  object,  but  the  case  is  otherwise.  Although  the  name  "  Fort  Adjutant's 
mark"  is  now  forgotten,  the  mark  itself  is  as  highly  esteemed  as  ever.  Indeed, 
it  is  more  so,  for  the  jam  -  bazes  of  our  day  manufacture  it.  We  cannot 
say  how  the  case  is  towards  Najd ;  but  in  the  country  of  the  Tigris,  when  a 
horse  which  does  not  show  these  marks  of  tying  has  been  bought  for  the  Indian 
market,  it  is  a  common  practice  to  bind  a  strip  of  fresh  intestine  (inis-rdn)  round 
one  or  both  gaskins,  a  little  above  the  hock-joint,  so  that  as  it  dries  it  shall  cut  into 
the  flesh.  At  the  period  of  the  year  when  the  jam-bazes'  yards  are  full,  one  may 
see  in  Baghdad  and  Mosul  rows  of  horses  which  are  undergoing  this  villainous 
piece  of  preparation.  By  the  time  that  these  animals  reach  Bombay  the  wounds 
are  healed,  and  more  or  less  covered  with  white  hair.  The  practised  eye  can 
generally  distinguish  between  a  town-made  shgdr  and  a  natural  one.  But,  after  all, 
what  does  it  signify  ?  Even  the  shgdr  which  has  been  produced  by  hobbling  is 
more  likely  to  indicate  the  gendarme's  horse  than  the  desert  courser  ;  for  the  Bedouin, 
as  has  been  seen,  seldom  ride  their  colts.      Long  ago  this  mark  may  have  possessed 

'  Op.  cit.  ill  Catalog.  No.  36,  vol.  ii.  p.  84. 
2  R 


;i4 


CONCLUSION. 


some  slight  value,  as  showing  that  the  bearer  had  at  least  not  been  an  idler, 
it  is  now  chiefly  a  reflection  on  the  judgment  or  the  sanity  of  buyers  in  India. 


But 


Section  V. — On  the  proper  Treatment  of  the  exported  Arabian. 


In  reference  to  what  is  termed  "naturalisation,"  there  is  at  least  a  series  of 
admitted  facts  to  set  out  with.  It  is  known  that  certain  kinds  of  animals 
possess,  and  that  other  kinds  do  not  possess,  the  power  of  flourishing  in  new 
homes.  Thus,  the  horse  can  increase  and  multiply,  without  special  protection,  in 
almost  every  inhabited  region  of  the  globe.  The  common  brown  rat,  which  is 
supposed  to  be  a  native  of  Central  Asia,  has  not  only  spread  to  all  parts  of  the 
world,  but  proved  stronger  in  many  countries  than  the  indigenous  species.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  yak  cannot  live  to  the  south  of  the  Himalayas  beyond  the  im- 
mediate neighbourhood  of  the  snow  ;  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  keep  European 
dogs  healthy  in  the  plains  of  India  ;  snakes,  which  are  so  abundant  in  warm  climates, 
diminish  as  we  go  north,  and  wholly  cease  at  lat.  62°.  A  totally  different  question  is, 
whether  it  is  possible  for  races  which  are  removed  to  uncongenial  climates  to  grow 
inured  to  them.  This  is  still  an  open  subject ;  but  it  is  safest  to  consider  that  the 
natural  habit,  or  constitution,  can  be  but  slightly,  if  at  all,  altered  in  this  direction. 
Thus,  it  does  not  appear  that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  "acclimatisation"  for  the 
unmixed  offspring  of  Europeans  in  the  plains  of  India.  And  we  know  of  a  family 
from  Hi-rat  which  settled  upwards  of  sixty  years  ago  in  the  Madras  Presidency, 
which  in  the  intervening  period  has  obtained  wives  exclusively  from  the  country  of 
its  origin,  and  which,  owing  to  the  number  of  premature  deaths  among  its  members, 
is  now  dying  out  in  India.  To  confine  our  illustrations  to  Arab  horses,  there  exists 
in  India  a  peculiar  disease  called  ka-ma-ri,  or  loin-ill,  which  tends  to  paralyse 
the  hind -quarters.^  This  disorder  is  most  prevalent  in  the  province  of  Bengal, 
where  the  climate  is  as  humid  as  that  of  Arabia  is  the  opposite.  In  the  hot 
and  rainy  months  it  attacks  the  Arabian  horse  in  Bengal  inevitably,  the  English 
horse  less  surely,  the  Australian  horse  but  casually,  and  the  native  horse  rarely. 
On  questions  of  this  nature,  artificially  protected  animals  do  not  supply  perfect 
data ;  and  the  fact  that  in  Bengal  proper  Arab  horses  can  by  no  means  be  saved 
from  ka-ma-rt  is  therefore  all  the  more  telling.  When,  after  a  time,  a  horse 
hardens  in  a  climate  which  at  first  appeared  injurious  to  him,  the  improvement  is 


1  Much  has  been  written  in  India,  and  a  little  in 
England  also,  on  the  subject  of  ka-ma-}'i,  and  its 
usual  accompaniment,   worm  in  the  eye  —  e.g.^  in  a 


series  of  papers  on  "  Indian  Horse  Diseases,"  which 
appeared  in  the  Asian  Sporting  Newspaper,  Calcutta, 
between  May  and  October  1879. 


ON   THE  PROPER    TREATMENT  OF   THE  EXPORTED   ARABIAN.     315 

probably  more  connected  with  his  natural  growth,  and  with  good  stable  manage- 
ment, than  with  supposed  "acclimatisation." 

In  regard  to  the  importation  of  Arabian  horses  into  India,  there  are  two  facts 
which  will  not  be  disputed.  Owing  to  the  inferiority  of  its  breeds,  "  England's 
miracle,"  as  our  Indian  Empire  is  styled  in  Turkish  circles,  has  need  of  every 
serviceable  foreign  remount  which  can  be  procured.  And  India,  outside  of  cer- 
tain districts,  possesses  a  climate  in  which  the  Arabian  may  live  as  healthily,  and 
with  as  little  care,  as  in  his  native  one.  In  more  than  thirty  years  we  have  lost  but 
five  Arabians,  three  of  which  would  not  have  come  to  harm  if  they  had  been  better 
cared  for.^  In  the  preceding  pages,  the  facilities  which  now  exist  for  the  transport 
of  Arab  horses  from  Bussorah  to  India  have  been  noticed.  The  steam-companies 
will  not  ship  horses  in  the  season  when  rough  weather  is  to  be  expected.  Boxes  are 
not  thought  necessary ;  and  the  horses  are  ranged  as  close  as  they  can  stand,  on 
both  sides  of  the  upper  deck.  At  first  they  are  inclined  to  be  troublesome,  especially 
at  feeding  and  watering  times.  When  the  spray  dashes  against  their  hind-quarters, 
it  sets  some  of  them  a-kicking,  so  that  they  hit  their  hocks  against  the  iron  railings 
of  the  ship's  side.  But,  on  the  whole,  they  are  landed  in  excellent  health  and  spirits. 
The  temptation  which  this  offers  to  their  Arab  owners  to  try  them  before  they  have 
been  a  month  in  India  has  already  been  glanced  at.  The  annual  Bombay  race- 
meeting  takes  place  in  February.  To  encourage  the  dealers,  several  prizes  for 
horses  landed  between  that  month  and  the  previous  September  are  included  in  the 
race  programme.  At  that  time  of  the  year,  the  climate  of  Bombay  is  a  curious  blend 
of  heat  and  cold.-  The  nights  and  mornings  are  damp  and  chilly,  and  by  day  the 
temperature  mounts  to  sweating-point.  Horses  fresh  from  Najd,  and  even  those 
from  high  up  the  Euphrates,  feel  this  more  than  horses  from  El  I'rak  do.  But  all 
imported  animals  are  apt  to  suffer ;  and  it  is  noticed  that  Arab  horses  which,  after  a 
hurried  preparation,  win  races  at  Byculla  in  the  season  of  landing,  rarely  distinguish 
themselves  afterwards.  The  proper  course  with  valuable  Arabians  is  to  remove 
them,  as  soon  as  possible  after  they  reach  India,  from  the  sea-shore  districts  to  a 
plateau  like  Mysore  or  Poona.  An  open-air,  or,  at  any  rate,  a  very  airy  billet, 
will  best  agree  with  them  there.      Necessarily,  they  must  experience  a  change  of 


^  One  fatal  case  was  that  alluded  to  at  p.  33,  supra, 
in  f.n.  2.  A  better  fence  would  have  kept  out  the  mad 
dog.  Hsemorrhage  after  castration  was  the  immediate 
cause  of  death  in  another  case  ;  but  the  7'eal  cause 
was  the  employment  of  an  unqualified  operator.  The 
third  victim  of  preventible  causes  was  a  beautiful  little 
mare  from  Najd,  which,  when  found  to  be  in  foal,  and 
put  out  of  training,  was  allowed  to  fill  her  stomach 
with  the  dry  harsh  grass  of  a  compound  at  Ahmed- 
nagar,  and  died  from  rupture  of  the  intestine.     About 


the  same  time,  and  at  the  same  place,  a  thoroughbred 
stallion  which  the  Government  had  just  imported  from 
England  died  in  his  box  of  snake-bite.  This  means 
that  the  horse-keepers  failed  to  keep  down  the  rank 
weeds  of  the  monsoon  season  in  his  stable-yard, 
and  that  their  superiors  failed  to  make  them  do  so. 
Genuine  accidents  will  certainly  happen,  but  the  re- 
sults of  carelessness  are  not  accidents. 

2  Sard-gajiii — i.e.,   cold-warm  —  is   the   expressive 
Indian  descriptive. 


316 


CONCL  US  ION. 


water ;  but  they  should  be  gradually  introduced  to  grains  which  are  new  to  them. 
Barley  is  the  horse-corn  of  Arabia,  and  it  is  cultivated  in  India.  Cooked  food  and 
sloppy  messes  are  approved  of  by  many,  owing  to  their  filling  appearance ;  but 
horses  do  not  relish  them,  and  it  is  to  be  assumed  that  they  know  what  suits  them. 
The  value  of  bran  is  admitted  by  all.  Every  horse  should  be  brought  to  eat  it, 
both  dry  and  mashed,  when  he  is  in  health.  But  saliva  is  essential  to  digestion,  and 
this  fluid  is  secreted  in  the  proper  quantity  only  when  the  grinders  are  at  work 
on  hard  dry  corn. 

The  climate  of  the  British  Islands  is  even  more  favourable  than  that  of  India 
to  the  Arabian  horse.  It  prepares  for  him  no  special  diseases.  He  can  do  at 
least  as  much  work  in  it  as  in  his  own.  His  natural  soundness,  hardness,  cheer- 
fulness, and  longevity  continue  to  display  themselves.  The  only  property  which 
suffers  impairment  is  that  of  fecundity.  How  far  it  is  worth  while  to  take  a  foreign 
horse  to  a  country  so  well  supplied  is  a  different  question.  Sentiment  apart,  it  de- 
pends on  the  rider's  weight,  and  on  his  wants  as  a  horseman.  The  man  whose  riding 
is  restricted  to  metalled  roads,  and  to  the  stony  streets  of  great  cities,  hardly  knows 
what  to  do  with  a  galloping  hack  like  the  Arabian.  The  mounted  officer  who  has 
the  prospect  of  serving  in  the  United  Kingdom  after  his  return  from  Egypt  or 
India  will  save  his  purse,  and  perhaps  his  neck,  if  he  take  home  with  him  his 
trusty  Arab  charger.  In  another  place  the  Arab's  qualifications  for  crossing  a 
country  were  considered.  But  after  passing  from  that  subject  we  received  a  letter 
from  a  sportsman  in  England,  an  extract  from  which  may  prove  acceptable.  Re- 
ferring to  an  Arab  horse  which  he  had  bought  in  Bombay,  our  correspondent  thus 
describes  a  day's  work  in  Northamptonshire  : — 

"Leaving  his  stable  yesterday  at  10.30,  he  carried  me  nine  miles  to  cover;  and  we  had 
an  hour's  run  in  the  morning,  and  two  and  a  half  hours  in  the  afternoon,  over  a  very  big 
country.  He  carried  me  all  day,  with  only  one  fall  (not  his  fault)  ;  and  when  we  finished, 
was  fresher  than  many  of  the  second  horses.  He  came  home  ten  miles,  arriving  at  7. 10 
P.M.,  having  covered  about  sixty  miles,  ate  up  everything,  and  seems  fairly  fresh,  indeed 
quite  fresh,  to-day — a  performance  that,  I  am  sure,  has  never  been  equalled  in  the  Shires 
before  by  a   14.1   horse,  carrying  nearly,  if  not  quite,  twelve  stone." 

In  our  day  the  transport  of  Arab  horses  to  England  offers  no  difficulties. 
In  European  waters  a  crib,  or  horse-box,  cannot  be  dispensed  with.  The  shipping- 
agents'  yards  at  the  several  seaports  usually  contain  a  collection  of  boxes  which 
have  seen   service.      These    require  to   be  carefully  refitted  ^   before  being  again 


1  For  one  thing,  if  the  inside  lining  be  merely 
tacked  on,  the  weight  of  the  padding  which  is  put 
between  it  and  the  wood  will  soon  cause  the  tacks 
or  nails  to  give.  A  greater  evil  is  the  nailing  down 
of  the  matting  or  other  material  which  is  laid  in  the 


box  to  lessen  the  jar.  Nails  in  such  a  situation  are 
sure  to  work  out ;  and  parts  of  them  will  perhaps  be 
found,  at  the  end  of  the  voyage,  lodged  in  the  poor 
animal's  unshod  and  softened  hoofs. 


ON   THE  PROPER    TREATMENT  OF   THE  EXPORTED  ARABIAN.     317 

used  ;  but  for  Arab  horses  they  can  scarcely  be  too  open.^  Before  embarkation, 
the  horse  should  be  made  familiar  with  the  structure  that  is  to  form  his  cabin. 
The  last  Arab  horse  which  we  took  to  England  had  so  recently  left  pastoral  Arabia, 
that  when  he  had  to  be  shipped  at  Bombay  he  had  only  been  a  few  times  in  a 
stable.  When  his  travelling  carriage  was  shown  to  him,  he  stubbornly  refused 
to  enter  it.  We  then  had  it  carted  to  his  stable,  and  set  down  like  a  little  porch, 
with  both  ends  open,  in  front  of  his  loose-box.  Still,  he  would  not  go  into  it, 
although  he  must  have  seen  his  bed  and  corn  awaiting  him  beyond  it.  After 
standing  for  at  least  an  hour  tied  to  it,  with  no  one  near  him,  he  began  to  hammer 
it  with  his  fore-feet.  Thus  he  gradually  felt  his  way  through  it,  and  never  after- 
wards mistrusted  it.  The  advantage  of  this  was,  that  during  the  voyage  he 
could  be  led  out  of  his  box  in  fine  weather,  exercised,  hand-rubbed,  and  put  back 
again.  There  is  this  to  be  said  in  favour  of  having  a  horse's  travelling -box 
made  movable,  that  it  can  then  be  shifted  from  one  part  of  the  vessel  to 
another  to  suit  changes  of  wind  and  climate.  As  the  ship's  officers,  however, 
may  not  always  take  the  trouble  to  do  this,  or  may  even  remove  the  box  from  a 
bad  site  to  a  worse  one,  perhaps  it  is  a  better  plan  to  arrange  that  a  regular  berth 
shall  be  knocked  up  for  the  animal  by  the  ship's  carpenter,  in  a  good  situation. 
Two  divisions  can  then  be  made,  in  one  of  which  the  horse  may  be  allowed  his 
liberty  in  favourable  weather.  As  a  rule,  horses  will  not  lie  down  and  rest  on  an 
iron  deck  as  readily  as  on  a  wooden  one. 

In  every  foreign  country  to  which  the  Arabian  is  carried,  the  salient  features 
of  the  method  in  which  he  must  have  been  reared  in  his  native  land  should  be 
remembered.  It  is  absurd  to  imagine  that  because  he  has  cost  a  large  sum  he 
ought  to  be  shut  up  in  a  grand  stable.  We  are  no  advocates  of  over-exposure.  It 
is  true  that  Eastern  horses,  if  well  fed,  will  keep  in  good  condition  when  picketed  on 
the  bare  plain,  with  the  sun  beating  on  them  by  day,  and,  perhaps,  rain  or  snow 
at  night.  Even  in  these  circumstances,  any  little  protection  that  can  be  afforded 
is  repaid  by  the  results.  The  horses  which  work  in  the  tram-cars  of  Bombay  and 
Calcutta  last  the  longer,  if  padded  sun-protectors  are  placed  over  their  polls  and 
back-bones.  In  camps  in  India  and  Afghanistan,  it  has  been  found  beneficial  to 
line  the  horses'  blankets  with  cotton  cloth,  and  put  them  on  white  side  upper- 
most when  the  sun  is  powerful.  In  cold  nights,  a  slight  enough  screen  of 
earth  or  snow  between  a  horse's  standing-place  and  the  blast  helps  to  preserve  him. 
Stabling  is  as  essentially  a  phase  of  civilisation  as  house-building  is.  If  any  breed 
of  horses  requires  air  and  light  more  than  another,  it  is  the  Arabian  one.      Every 


^  It  is  unnecessary  to  roof  in  the  horse-box.  Three 
removable  iron  hoops,  to  support  a  tarpauhn,  are  far 
better.    A  broad  canvas  shnsr  should  be  huns  at  niaht 


below  the  animal's  belly,  so  that  he  may  rest  on  it, 
and  as  a  stay  in  rough  weather. 


3i8 


CONCL  USION. 


stabled  horse,  when  a  window  is  within  reach,  turns  to  it  as  naturally  as  plants 
do  to  the  light.  Solitary  imprisonment  in  the  most  palatial  loose-box  cannot  be 
agreeable  to  the  horse  which,  in  his  native  land,  was  never  out  of  sight  and  sound 
of  his  fellows.  Every  country  has  its  own  usages,  Avhich  are  commonly  based  on 
good  reasons.  At  all  events,  the  usages  are  not  to  be  altered,  and  it  is  whimsical 
to  attempt  to  do  so.  The  Arab  horse  in  India  does  not,  as  a  rule,  experience 
any  very  startling  change  in  his  mode  of  life  —  though  perhaps  he  wonders  at 
the  amount  of  grooming  which  he  receives.  But  when  he  is  taken  to  Europe, 
many  things  must  puzzle  him.  After  having,  all  his  days,  fed  from  the  ground, 
or,  at  the  most,  from  a  nose-bag,^  he  now  has  his  hay  presented  to  him  high  up 
towards  the  ceiling,  as  if  he  were  a  giraffe.  The  stable-men  and  stable-gear  are 
equally  novel.  The  human  hand,  with  its  thumb  and  fingers,  its  palm,  nails,  and 
convenient  articulations,  forms  a  perfect  tool-chest,  and  the  oriental  groom  knows 
how  to  use  it.  2  But,  with  us,  the  body-brush  and  the  curry-comb,  the  sponge,  the 
wisp,  and  the  rubber,  not  to  mention  the  broom  and  the  pitchfork,  are  considered 
indispensable  adjuncts.  What  with  flicks  from  the  towel  or  leather,  too  much 
stable  language,  and  too  energetic  brushing  or  wisping,  the  sensitive  and  glossy- 
coated  Ku-hai-lan  is  in  some  danger  of  being  made  "  vicious."  There  are  stable- 
men who,  even  at  the  risk  of  having  their  crowns  cracked,  delight  in  seeing  a 
horse  "lively"  when  he  is  being  dressed  over  —  that  is,  in  tickling  him  till  he 
kicks  again  ;  but  it  is  assumed  that  no  one  who  is  likely  to  import  an  Arabian 
would  permit  this  practice.-^     The  horse  of  Najd  can  seldom,  if  ever,  need  clipping ; 


^  Feeding-bags  preserve  the  corn,  or  chaff,  from  be- 
ing lost ;  but  they  impede  respiration,  favour  too  rapid 
eating,  and  are  not  ahvays  taken  off  at  the  proper 
time.  They  should  not  be  made  of  leather  or  of 
canvas,  but  of  light  and  porous  stuff  The  Arab 
feeding-bag,  of  goat's  or  camel's  hair,  resembles  a 
sieve  in  texture,  is  very  cheap,  and  can  ahnost  be 
carried  in  the  pocket.  Hempen  feeding-sheets,  about 
3  ft.  square,  and  heavy  enough  to  lie  flat,  do  well 
in  horse-lines,  but  not  where  high  winds  may  be 
expected. 

2  In  an  old  English  work  on  Farriery,  entitled 
Tke  Perfect  Horsemaiij  or.  The  Experienced  Secrets 
of  Mr  Markha?!i^s  Fifty  Years'  Practice,  1684,  the 
groom  is  directed  "to  rub  down  a  horse's  legs  with 
wisps,  or  with  a  clean  cloth,  or  with  your  bare  hands, 
which  is  best  of  all."  On  another  page,  he  is  told 
"  to  go  over  all  parts "  with  his  wet  hands  ;  and 
further,  that  "  what  his  hands  did  wet,  his  hands 
must  rub  dry  again."  The  sponge  is  not  mentioned ; 
but  we  do  not  know  whether  to  infer  from  this,  that 
sponges  were  not  generally  imported  into  England  at 


that  date,  or  that  Gervase  Markham  disapproved  of 
their  use  in  stables.  If  he  really  meant  to  say  that 
the  "  bare  hands  "  were  better  than  sponges,  then  his 
ideas  were  in  advance  not  only  of  his  own  time  but 
of  our  time.  Even  the  well-cared-for  bath-sponge 
soon  becomes  coated,  in  its  countless  pores  or  cells, 
with  sedimentary  animal  matter,  which,  when  the 
structure  is  wetted,  issues  again  in  liquid  form.  It  is 
stated  that  soap-suds  form  a  richer  manure  than  even 
poudrette  does  ;  and  if  so,  it  can  easily  be  imagined 
what  the  contents  of  a  used  sponge  are. 

3  Persian  muleteers,  when  they  remove  th&pA-ldn  or 
pack-saddle,  on  halting  days,  curry  their  beasts  with  an 
iron  instrument ;  but  the  only  article  which  we  have 
ever  seen  the  Arabs  thus  use  is  the  mare's  mikh-ldt, 
or  feeding  -  bag.  This,  when  rolled  up,  resembles 
the  glove  of  cocoa-nut  fibre  with  which  the  Indian 
grooms  dry-rub  their  horses.  Even  in  Baghdad,  the 
shops  will  be  searched  in  vain  for  a  horse-brush.  In 
India,  the  fashion  of  picketing  horses  with  head-ropes 
and  heel-ropes  facilitates  grooming  ;  and  native  horse- 
men put  a  bit  in  the  horse's  mouth  at  "  stable-hours," 


ON   THE  PROPER    TREATMENT  OF   THE  EXPORTED  ARABIAN.     319 

but  his  natural  coat,  even  when  in  our  chmate  it  grows  thicker,  generally  requires 
the  addition  of  a  blanket.  The  happy  mean  has  to  be  observed  here.  It  is  true 
that  animal  warmth  proceeds  from  the  food,  but  the  surface  also  demands  care. 
A  stable,  provided  that  it  be  dry,  may  be  comfortable  without  being  at  summer 
heat ;  and  it  is  better  to  increase  the  clothing  than  to  light  the  fire.  We  mention 
this  here,  because  in  England  many  people  think  that  the  Arabian,  as  the  native 
of  a  warm  climate,  requires  hothouse  treatment.  This,  however,  is  a  mistake. 
As  low  down  on  the  Euphrates  as  Kar-ba-la,  thick  ice  may  form  night  after  night 
in  February.  Taking  into  account  the  absence  of  stables,  the  Bedouin  horse  in 
Sha-mi-ya  experiences  annually  greater  changes  of  climate,  cold  included,  than  any 
highly-bred  horse  in  England  does.  What  the  former  is  not  accustomed  to — not 
at  least  till  townsmen  buy  him — is  smells.  To  insist  that  a  stable  shall  not  smell  of 
a  stable  is  nonsense.  The  inoffensiveness,  within  due  limits,  of  horses,  compared 
with  most  other  kinds  of  domestic  animals,  is  rather  remarkable.  The  Irishman 
does  not  object  to  allow  pigs  and  poultry  to  live  in  the  same  room  with  him,  but  that 
is  an  exceptional  bias  ;  whereas  no  reasonable  mortal  should  quarrel  with  his  quar- 
ters, if  lodged  in  a  spare  loose-box  in  a  well-kept  stable.  This  circumstance  en- 
hances the  risk  of  cleanliness  beingf  neglected.  Accumulations  in  a  stable  do  not 
greatly  offend  the  senses  ;  but  the  inhaling  over  and  over  again  of  air  which  is  thus 
contaminated  ranks  among-  the  causes  of  weakness  and  illness  in  stabled  horses. 

The  Arabian,  as  we  have  seen,  possesses  the  best  of  constitutions.  If  lodging 
suited  to  his  habit,  and  to  the  climate  and  season,  judicious  feeding,  scrupulous 
cleanliness,  sufficient  grooming,  and  last,  but  not  least,  plenty  of  work  or  exercise, 
fail  to  keep  him  healthy  in  foreign  countries,  purgatives  and  tonics  will  not  do  so. 
Of  course  we  do  not  mean  that  the  most  perfect  stable  economy  will  altogether 
ward  off  disease  from  the  exported  Arabian  any  more  than  from  other  horses,  how- 
ever much  it  may  abate  it.  If  ever  the  Arab  horse  hang  his  head,  and  refuse  to 
pick  so  much  as  a  blade  of  green  grass,  it  may  be  concluded  that  the  diagnosis 
and  prescriptions  of  an  experienced  veterinary  surgeon  are  demanded.  We 
say  experienced,  because  not  every  man  who  holds  a  diploma  can  tell  what  ails  a 
horse.     The  juniors  have  their  way  to  open,  their  rivers  to  set  on  fire,  and  their 


and  pass  the  bridle  of  it  under  his  tail  like  a  crupper, 
to  keep  him  from  biting,  and  at  the  same  time  improve 
his  carriage.  Of  course,  the  grooms  like  this  method, 
and  no  man  can  master  an  animal  of  which  he  is 
afraid  ;  but  a  horse  is  the  better  of  being  allowed 
some  play  while  he  is  being  "dressed."  A  good 
way  to  fix  a  horse  which  is  being  groomed  in  a 
loose -box  is,  to  stand  him  with  his  head  towards 
one  corner  of  it  and  his  tail  towards  another  corner, 


and  tie  him  by  two  ropes  passing  from  his  head-stall 
to  staples  in  the  wall  on  either  side.  There  will  then 
neither  be  dead  wall  nor  bars  in  front  of  him,  for 
him  to  grab  at.  A  bit  will  seldom  be  necessar>', 
and  as  for  a  "dressing  muzzle,"  it  is  worse  than 
useless.  A  horse  which  is  very  ticklish  had  better 
be  groomed  in  knee-caps  ;  and  if  he  stamp  and  paw 
with  his  fore-feet,  an  old  mattress  should  be  thrown 
down  in  front  of  him. 


320 


CONCL  US  ION. 


paper-kites  of  theories  for  whicli  to  find,  or  mal^e,  materials.  Give  us  tlie  old  man 
who  has  passed  his  period  of  experimenting,  and  whose  views  of  what  will  kill  and 
what  maj''  cure  are  fixed  on  the  basis  of  practice.  When  competent  professional 
advice  cannot  be  obtained,  and  the  seat  of  the  ailment  is  unknown,  it  is  better  that 
the  poor  animal  should  merely  be  made  comfortable,  and  allowed  to  die  of  the 
disease  which  has  seized  him,  than  that  medicines  should  be  rashly  administered. 
We  know  of  a  case  in  which  a  horse,  after  having  been  thus  surrendered  to 
his  fate,  unexpectedly  began  to  recover.  One  advantage  which  the  Arabian 
enjoys  in  India  is  that  his  Hindu  groom  does  not  give  him  slow  poisons,  under  the 
name  of  condition-balls  or  powders.  In  the  East  every  horse-master  has  himself  to 
blame  if  this  mischievous  practice  is  followed  ;  but  the  desert  horse  which  has  never 
tasted  physic  is  in  danger,  when  taken  to  England,  of  having  his  constitution 
tampered  with  by  groom-doctors  as  ignorant  of  the  nature  and  effects  of  the  various 
compounds  employed  by  them  as  they  are  of  the  animal  economy.  In  many  cases 
a  distemper  tends  to  pass  off  naturally,  either  through  running  its  course  or  on  the 
removal  of  its  cause.  And  illnesses  which  will  not  yield  to  artificial  medicines  may 
do  so  under  changes  of  air  and  diet,  comfortable  warmth,  rest,  work  or  exercise, 
hot  or  cold  fomentations,   hand-rubbing,^  and,  above  all  things,   patience. 

In  buying  Arabians  in  Arabia,  it  is  impossible  to  obtain  a  professional  man's 
verdict  as  to  soundness.  But  this  is  no  reason  for  pursuing  an  ostrich-like  course 
towards  such  purchases,  after  they  have  been  brought  to  a  civilised  country.  On 
the  contrary,  they  should  all  be  submitted  to  a  thorough  veterinary  examination, 
after  they  have  recovered  from  their  "sea-sorrows"  or  injuries  of  transport.  Not 
many  Bedouin  horses  which  have  been  kept  till  five  years'  old  in  the  desert  will 
pass  this  test  satisfactorily.  One  which  does  so  must  be  a  very  straight-made  and 
superior  piece  of  workmanship.  When  the  practised  eye  and  hand  of  the 
veterinarian  have  ascertained  that  there  are  no  external  traces  of  unsoundness, 
that  is  final.  But  the  case  is  different  with  the  majority  of  "  used  "  horses.  At  one 
or  more  points,  trivial  or  serious  alterations  indicate  where  certain  parts  have 
proved  unequal  to  the  tasks  which  have  been  exacted  from  them.  It  is  then  that 
the  judgment  of  the  qualified  practitioner  enables  him  to  form  an  opinion  of  how 
far    the    injury    has    proceeded,    and    what   limitations    it    imposes    on    usefulness. 


^  Hand -rubbing  is  not  exactly  counter  -  irritation ; 
but  in  many  of  the  cases  in  which  parts  are  bhstered, 
this  simple  stimulant  and  form  of  pressure  would 
prove  better  treatment.  Its  value  as  a  help  to  the 
circulation,  especially  when  exercise  cannot  be  given, 
is  very  considerable.  Acting  locally  on  the  absorb- 
ing and  repairing  power  of  nature,  it  promotes  the 


disappearance  of  non-inflammatory  effusions  round  the 
joints,  and  in  the  sheaths  of  tendons.  Even  bony  mat- 
ter, when  recent,  tends  to  yield  to  it.  With  hand- 
rubbing,  a  horse's  legs  will  stand  more  work  than 
they  will  do  without  it.  The  bandaged  leg  looks  dull 
and  flabby,  while  the  hand  -  rubbed  one  shines  like 
silver. 


ON   THE  PROPER    TREATMENT  OF  THE  EXPORTED  ARABIAN.     321 

Not  to  mention  old  horses  which  have  left  the  desert  as  such,  and  are  so 
unmistakably  broken  down  that  no  one  would  ever  think  of  galloping  them, 
there  is  many  a  fresh-looking  colt  which  may  seem  to  ordinary  people  uninjured, 
but  in  reality  has  been  well  started  on  the  road  to  unsoundness  by  his  Bedouin 
rider.  If  such  a  one  be  hurriedly  put  in  training,  he  may  astonish  his  owner  by 
"breaking  down  badly,"  as  it  is  called,  after  very  moderate  work.  If,  as  a  pre- 
liminary step,  he  had  been  submitted  to  an  able  veterinarian,  perhaps  it  would 
have  been  pointed  out  that  one  of  his  suspensory  ligaments  was  thicker  than  the 
other,  or  that  there  was  a  thickening  of  its  lower  and  sheath-like  portion  on  one 
side  of  the  fetlock  joint,  or  on  both,  and  that  an  interval  of  at  least  a  year  was 
essential  to  recovery.  A  hasty  preparation  may  ruin  the  soundest  horse ;  and, 
even  apart  from  the  dictates  of  humanity,  it  is  a  sad  thing  when  a  noble  colt,  which 
might  have  proved  a  treasure  to  his  owner  for  half  a  lifetime,  is  permanently 
injured  through  incautious  treatment  in  his  first  year  in  a  new  country. 


The  Bedouin*  Hau-daj. 


2  S 


INDEXES 


NOTE. 

ON  several  grounds  this  Index  requires  to  be  introduced  with  something  not  unlil-;e  an 
apology.  First,  the  fact  is  evident  that  it  contains  a  good  deal  of  material  of  a  kind 
•which  is  not  usually  committed  to  a  table  of  reference.  What  opened  the  way  for  this 
irregularity,  if  such  it  should  be  considered,  was  the  adoption  of  the  method  of  relegating 
all  foreign  terms  to  a  separate  Index,  instead  of  intermixing  them  with  our  own  English 
words  in  the  columns  of  a  general  catalogue.  From  this  it  formed  but  a  small  step  to  pro- 
ceed to  the  task  which  has  been  undertaken,  of  adding  under  the  more  important  headings 
a  little  special  information.  In  how  far  that  information  will  be  appreciated  is  a  different 
question.  According  to  our  experience,  those  who,  as  travellers  or  otherwise,  are  interested 
in  Asiatic  Turkey  and  Arabia,  do  not  soon  tire  of  fresh  notes  on  the  topography  of  those 
countries.  It  also  appears  probable  that  the  general  reader,  when  he  encounters  references 
to  oriental  worthies  of  antiquity,  such  as  El  Asma'-i  and  Abii  '1  Fi-da,  will  gladly  find  at  the 
end  of  the  volume  slight  notices  of  those  people.  And  lastly,  with  so  many  of  our  countrymen 
serving  officially  in  parts  like  India  and  Egypt,  the  few  articles  which  are  devoted  to  the 
elucidation  of  certain  Arabic  words  bearing  the  closest  relationship  to  Islamism  will,  we  venture 
to  hope,  be  received  with  indulgence. 

In  regard  to  the  attempts  which  are  made  in  the  Index  to  interpret  Semitic  names,  we  are 
conscious  that  such  explanations  demand  a  fuller  conversance  than  ours  with  linguistic  science. 
In  Arabic,  as  in  every  other  language,  there  are  countless  words  the  first  meanings  of  which 
cannot  be  discovered.  The  Arabic  lexicographers  did  not  know  the  origins  of  very  many  of 
the  terms  which  they  collected  ;  and  the  etymologies  given  in  Lane's  great  Arabic-English 
dictionary  are  wholly  Eastern  in  character.  As  for  the  Bedouin,  they  are  still  too  hard  pressed 
in  the  struggle  for  existence  to  bestow  much  thought  on  the  names  which  are  handed  down 
among  them.  If  the  reader  ask  why,  in  the  face  of  such  difficulties,  etymological  material  is 
admitted  into  the  Index,  good  reasons  are  not  wanting.  In  the  first  place,  it  cannot  be 
altogether  uninteresting  to  notice,  even  approximately,  the  lines  which,  from  prehistoric 
times,  the  Arabs  of  the  desert  have  followed  in  bestowing  names  on  their  national  or  tribal 
subdivisions,  and  on  their  breeds  of  horses  and  camels.  And,  secondly,  some  of  the  Euro- 
pean travellers  who  pass  our  way  exhibit  a  kind  of  instinctive  tendency  to  investigate  the 
meanings  of  proper  names.  As  the  result  in  part  of  their  researches,  a  plentiful  crop  of 
"  popular  etymologies  "  has  arisen  ;  ^  and  the  word-meanings  which  are  offered  in  this  Index, 
however  open  to  correction,  are  at  least  improvements  on  those  that  are  arrived  at  through  a 
process  of  guessing. 


^  Par  exemple^  a  writer  so  learned  as  the  late  Dean 
Stanley,  in  Sinai  and  Palestine  (App.,  pp.  503  et  508) 
identifies  "  Peleg "  with  niKayos — which  is  as  if  we 
should  derive  the  name  of  the  N.  American  river 
Potomac   from   Trorajxhs.      The  number   of  articulate 


sounds  is  not  unlimited  ;  and  the  European  traveller 
in  Semite  lands  should  always  remember  that  two 
Avords  may  be  similar  both  in  appearance  and  meaning, 
without  being  akin  to  one  another. 


INDEX     I. 

BEING  A  GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND  SUPPLEMENT  TO  ALL  REFERENCES 
TO  ARABIC  AND  OTHER  FOREIGN  WORDS. 


A'b-bas     . 

A'B-BA-Si  . 
A'B-BAS    I. 

A'B-BAS  Pasha 

A'B-BUD     . 
A'BD 

A'b-da 

A'bdu  'l  A'ziz 

A'bdu  'l  Ka-dir 


A 

An  Arabic  proper  name.  The  Prophet's  paternal  uncle 
was  A'b-bas  ibn  Mut-ta-lib,  one  of  whose  descendants, 
nearly  a  century  after  the  Flight,  supplanted  the  U-may-yad 
dynasty  by  the  still  more  brilliant 

or  "  Abbaside,"  line  of  thirty-seven  princes ;  with  which 
the  historical  Arab  Caliphate  terminated.  V.  arts.  BAGHDAD, 
et  HULAGU,  infra. 

King  of  Persia  (1585-1628),  introduction  of  Arabian  stal- 
lions into  Persia  by,  p.  273. 

Viceroy  of  Egypt  (1848-54),  collection  of  Arabian  horses 
by,  p.  219  et  f.n.  3.     His  view  on  this  subject,  ibidem. 

[A  man's  name.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA, 
Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

\_Worshipper,  slave?\     P.  106.     Et  v.  art.  A'BDU  'LLA,  infi-a. 

A  subdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar  Bedouin,  represented  both 
in  Al  Ja-ZI-RA  and  (through  Muhammad  ibiui  'r  Ra-shid)  in 
peninsular  Arabia,  p.  122  et  f.n.  5. 

One  of  the  (Islamic)  proper  names  of  the  Arabs  which  are 
described  at  p.  107  et  f.n.  i.  It  has  been  given  to  an  incon- 
siderable mountain-range  in  N.W.  Al  Ja-zI-RA,  p.  "j^. 

A  proper  name  of  the  class  described  at  p.  107  et  f  n.  i. 

A-MtR  A'bdu  'd  Ka-dh<,  Prince  of  Maskara,  and  cham- 
pion of  Arab  independence  in  Algeria,  quoted,  pp.  60,  161. 

At  p.  153  f.n.  I,  Shekh  A'bdu  'l  Ka-dir,  Gt-ld-ni, 
whose  mausoleum  adorns  Baghdad.  The  Shekh  was  a  Sai-yid 
of  the  1 2th  Christian  century.  GlLAN,  or  GlL,  the  Persian 
province  on  the  Caspian    in  which   is    Rasht,  is  believed   to 


326 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


A'BDU  'l  Ka-dir — continued. 


A'bdu  'l  Ka-r1m    . 

A'BDU   'l   WAH-HAB 


A'bdu  'l  Wah-hab,  Haj-ji 
A'bdu  'lla 


ibn  Sa-ba 

A'bdu  'r  Rah-mAn 
Ab-jar 
Ab-ra-ha 
Ab-rash  . 
AbCi,  or  Ab       . 


have  been  his  birthplace.  He  is  now  regarded  as  a  great  Pir, 
or  saint,  through  whose  intercession  both  spiritual  and  mun- 
dane blessings  are  to  be  obtained.  A  hereditary  Na-KIB 
{v.  p.  153  et  Ln.  i),  or  warden,  holds  possession  of  his  tomb, 
and  of  the  broad  domains  which  are  attached  to  it.  Many 
generations  of  pilgrims  have  enriched  the  Nakibate.  The 
azure  dome  which  surmounts  the  Shekh's  resting-place  is 
one  of  the  chief  features  of  Baghdad.  Spacious  bazars,  and 
the  residences  of  the  Na-kib's  relatives,  give  a  good  appear- 
ance to  this  quarter.  In  religions,  not  only  extremes,  but 
also  lines  of  separation,  tend  towards  one  another.  The 
Wahabi,  as  he  passes  through  this  region,  reviles  the 
"  associators  of  saints  with  Allah "  ;  but  many  millions  of 
the  Sun-nite  Muslim  find  in  A'bdu  '1  Ka-dir  all  the  com- 
fort which  their  Shi-ite  brethren  do  in  A'li. 

One  of  the  proper  names  described  at  p.  107  et  f.n.  i. 

A  very  great  figure  in  Arabian  history.  Born  1691  ;  died 
1787.  Pp.  161  et  f.n.  I,  164.  (For  page  references  to  the 
school  which  he  founded,  v.  under  WahabyisM  in  Index  ii.) 

The  Arab  horse-dealer,  pp.  176,  306,  307. 

An  extremely  prevalent  proper  name  among  the  Arabs. 
The  Prophet's  father  bore  it.  (The  accusative  and  the  voca- 
tive forms  are  A'bda  'lla  ;  and  the  genitive,  A'bdi  'lla.  V. 
arts.  A'BD,  et  Allah.) 

Prince  of  Jabal  Shammar,  p.  40. 

Grandson  of  Fai-sal,  Sultan  of  Najd,  p.  42. 

P.  106  f.n.  3. 

The  Arab  horse-dealer,  p.  307. 

A'ntar's  charger,  p.  237. 

One  of  the  Ethiopian  kings  of  Yemen,  p.  28. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses.  Table  p.  263. 

One  of  those  ancient  Semitic  words  which,  we  may  assume, 
existed  before  Hebrew  was  Hebrew,  before  Syriac  was  Syriac, 
and  before  Arabic  was  Arabic  :  v.  p.  34  f.n.  i.  As  far  back 
as  the  beginning  of  literary  Arabic,  a-bil  conveyed  the  idea  of 
physical  paternity ;  for  Al  Kur-an  uses  it  in  this  sense — e.g., 
in  S.  xxiv.  If  this  be  the  pri7na?'y  mea.mng  of  a-M,  then  such 
phrases  as  aMi-zait-ja,  possessor  of  a  wife — i.e.,  husband  ;  aWi.- 
'l-husain,  constructor  of  the  little  fortress — i.e.,  the  fox  ;  and 
the  like,  are  rightly  regarded  b.s  fgiirative ;  and  this  is  the 
common  view.  But  see,  in  Professor  Robertson  Smith's  Kin- 
ship and  Marriage  in  Early  Arabia,  an  argument  that  the 
idea  of  possession  which  is  so  frequently  conveyed  by  a-bn 
forms  the  primary,  not  the  secondary,  meaning ;  that  in  pre- 
historic Arabia  fatherhood  did  not  necessarily  imply  pro- 
creation ;  and  that  the  family  was  held  together  by  the  rule 
that  the  head  of  it  was  the  father,  merely  in  the  sense  of 
possessor,  of  all  the  children  born   on  his  bed. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


327 


ABtr  A'-MIR 
Abu  ju-nCtb 


Abu  'l  Fi-dA  . 
Pp.  20,  79,  98. 


AbO  'l  Is-lam 
AbO  'l  Khashm 
AbO  ma'-ra-fa 

Abu  Ru-wais  . 
ABt>  Saur 

Abu  U'r-kub  . 

Ab-yar     . 
Ab  wa  ha-wa 
Aden 


Adh  dhill  fi  'l  hadhr 
Ad-ham   .... 
Adhmu  's  sabk 

A'd-nan  .... 


The  name  of  a  sub-strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN, 
Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

[Possessor  of  flanks — i.e.,  large-barrelled,  and  well  ribbed 
up.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235 
col.  i.,  and  in  pedigree  facing  p.  136. 

[Father  of  ransom,  Jieroism,  devotion?^  The  epithet  of  a 
Saracen  leader,  born  at  Damascus  in  the  time  of  the  Crusades, 
who,  when  his  inherited  but  disputed  princedom  of  HA-MA 
{q.  V.)  had  been  confirmed  to  him,  as  the  reward  of  prowess, 
by  the  Egyptian  Sultan,  divided  the  remaining  20  years  of 
his  life  between  the  duties  of  government,  the  encouragement 
of  scholars,  and  the  gratification  of  his  literary  bent.  Abu  '1 
Fi-da's  epitome  of  Arabian  history  was  fully  drawn  on  by 
Gibbon,  and  only  the  most  recent  European  writers  have 
opened  up  new  material. 

A  title  of  the  patriarch  Abraham,  p.  loi. 

V.  p.  34  fn.  I. 

[Possessor  of  a  maiie.']  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham- 
SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  name  of  a  leader  of  the  Sham-mar,  p.  64. 

[Having  impetuosity.']  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham- 
SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

[Possessed  of  large  hocks.]  The  name  of  a  sub-strain  of  the 
stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

[PI.  of^2V.]     Wells,  p.  105. 

In  Persian,  water  and  air  ;  idiomatically,  climate,  p.  3. 

In  Arabic,  ddn  means  abiding ;  and  in  Al  Kur-An,  fan- 
na-tu  7  ddn  means  Heaven.  The  Hebrew  "  Eden  "  is  the 
same  word  as  the  Arabic  ddn  ;  but  the  idea  of  a  terrestrial 
Paradise,  though  not  untraceable  in  ancient  Arab  legend,  is 
absent  from  Islamism.  The  seaport  of  Aden  or  A'dn,  in 
Yemen,  early  became  a  great  entrepot  of  the  trade  between 
Europe  and  Asia;  but  the  identification  of  it  with  the  "Eden" 
mentioned  in  Ezek.  xxvii.  23  is  erroneous.  The  "  Eden  "  with 
which  the  merchant  princes  of  Tyre  trafficked,  almost  certainly 
was  a  place  on  the  Upper  Euphrates,  near  Ba-lis.  The  history 
of  the  modern  Aden — pp.  20,  26 — is  that  of  the  Red  Sea 
route  to  India.  Tlie  capture  of  the  town,  in  1839,  was  the 
first  addition  made  to  the  British  empire  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Victoria. 

The  Bedouin  saying,  p.  119. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses,  Table  p.  262. 

A  name  which  Arab  horse-dealers  facetiously  give  to  splint, 
p.  177  et  fn.  I. 

An  important  step  or  figure  (said  to  be  the  21st  before 
Muhammad)  in  the  genealogical  ladder  by  which  Arabian 
pedigree-makers  connect  the  "Ishmaelite"  Arabs  with  Abra- 
ham, p.  99. 


328 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Adr. 
A'D-WAN   . 

Ae-ni-za  . 


A'FA-RfX   . 

Af-dha-hi 
Af-nas     . 

Agel 
Agha  Khan 


Ah-dab  or  Al  Ah-dab  , 

Ahl 

Ahlu  'l  bait  . 
Ahlu  'l  ha-yit 
Ahlu  'l  ma-dar    . 
Ahlu  'l  wa-bar     . 
Ahlu  'sh  Shi-mal 
Ahlu  't  tin  . 
Ah-mar   . 
A'-ID  BIN  Ta-mi-mi 


[Al]  A'ith 

Al-YAMU   'L   JA-HI-LI-YA 

A'i-yash  .        .        .        . 


[Correctly  idh-khir.']  The  Lemon  grass  [Andropogon 
schoenanthiis\  p.  38. 

\Chargers?\  A  Bedouin  horde  whose  pastures  are  in  the 
north-western  parts  of  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  p.  75. 

The  greatest,  perhaps,  of  the  Bedouin  nations  of  Arabia. 
[The  connection  of  the  name  with  dnz,  the  she-goat,  is  too 
probable  not  to  have  been  noticed  both  by  Arab  and  European 
scholars.]  Pp.  23,  42,  51,  65,  69,  73,  75,  83,  84,  85,  103,  104, 
106,  122  et  fn.  5,  123,  129,  138,  146,  149,  184,  210,  214,  218, 
241,  244,  264,  269,  292,  293,  294  f.n.  2,  298. 

[PI.  of  tf-rtt;  q.  v.  in  art.  Ophir.]  A  subdivis.  of  the 
Sham-mar,  p.  122. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235 
col.  iii. 

[For  af-tas,  having  the  nasal  bones  depressed  and  expanded^ 
A  characteristic  feature  of  the  face  in  the  Arabian  breed, 
p.  253  ^/ f.n.  4. 

[Correctly  U'kail ;  from  the  same  root  as  i'-kdl ;  v.  Ma'-GIL.] 
A  body  of  the  Arabian  people,  pp.  215  et  f.n.  2,  293. 

Or  more  formally,  in  official  documents,  "  His  Highness 
Agha  Khan,  Mehelati,"  is  the  title  familiarly  borne  by  each 
succeeding  head  of  the  distinguished  Persian  family  which  is 
mentioned  on  the  frontispiece  of  our  volume,  at  pp.  269,  310, 
and  more  fully  in  art.  Alamut,  infra.  [Agha,  Aga,  et  Aka, 
and  Khan  or  Kaan,  are  Tatar  words  of  the  same  meaning 
as  Bey  or  Beg,  q.  V.  In  Persia  and  Central  Asia,  khan  is 
also  a  common  name  for  the  caravansary,  a  merchant's  store 
or  place  of  business,  and  the  like.] 

[Co-derivative  with  Had-ban,  q.  v.'\  The  name  of  a  sub- 
strain of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

All  those  of  one  house,  race,  or  religion  ;  like  our  people  in 
"  one's  own  people." 

Tent  folk,  another  term  for  the  Bedouin,  p.  91. 

People  of  boundaries,  such  as  villagers  and  townsmen,  p.  91. 

Peasants,  p.  48  et  f.n.  i. 

A  descriptive  given  to  the  Bedouin,  p.  48  f.n.  i. 

Nations  (more  or  less  nomadic)  of  the  North,  p.  271. 

Another  epithet  of  peasants,  p.  15. 

A  colour  in  horses,  p.  260  et  f  n.  4 ;  Table  p.  262. 

The  Arabian  horse-exporter,  pp.  258,  260.  [The  root  oia-id 
is  that  of  id ;  sc,  returning  time  after  time,  as  a  Iwliday  does.] 
The  Ba-nu  Ta-mim  are  chiefly  cultivators.  The  town  of 
Huta  in  Najd  is  their  centre. 

{^Plain  of  sand.}     A  segment  of  Al  Ha-w1-JA,  pp.  82,  83. 

[Daj's  of  Igno7'ance.]  The  pre- Islamic  ages  in  Arabia,  p. 
52  £>/  fn.  7. 

[Having  mucli  of  the  means  of  life.']  A  subdivis.  of  the 
Ae-ni-za,  Table  p.   121. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


329 


Ai-yOb 
P.  106. 


AjA  or  Ja-BAL  Aja 

A'JA-JI-RA 

A'jam 


A'juz 


A'ka-ba    .... 
Akh-dhar 

A-KHIRU   'D   DA-WA,   el   KAI 

A'kId       .... 
Al 


Al 


[Al]  A'bd 
Al  A'bdi  'lla 

Alam-dhai-yan 
Alamut  . 


The  Arabs  thus  render  the  proper  name  which  in  the 
Bibhcal  hterature  is  lyyob  ["Job"].  It  is  impossible  to  say 
whether  the  name  originated  in  the  speech  which  is  now 
called  Hebrew,  or  in  Arabic.  A  certain  man  named  Ai-yub 
is  cited  in  Al  Kur-AN  as  an  example  at  once  of  firm  piety 
under  affliction,  and  of  the  great  reward  thereof.  Of  course, 
if  it  be  considered  that  the  "  lyyob  "  of  the  Hebrew  poem 
was  ab  origine  a  poetic  creation,  or  an  allegoric  figure  like 
Bunyan's  Greatheart,  then  the  "  Ai-yub  "  of  the  Arabs  must 
have  been  borrowed ;  and  the  traditions  about  him  which 
commentators  on-  the  Kur-an  relate,  seeing  that  "The 
Book  of  Job "  does  not  contain  them,  cannot  be  really 
ancient.  But  if  the  hero  of  the  poem  was  more  or  less 
a  historic  person,  then  it  is  highly  probable  that  he  was  an 
Arab.  "The  Book  of  Job"  is  adjudged  to  be  "a  genuine 
outcome  of  the  religious  life  and  thought  of  Israel ; "  but 
its  anonymous  author  may  have  taken  his  materials  from 
the  traditions  of  the  Arabs  ;  and  this  supposition  supplies  an 
easy  explanation  of  the  Arabian  characteristics  of  the  poem. 

A  mountain-chain  over  against  HA-YIL,  q.  v.  infra.      P.  39. 

A  subdivis.  of  the  Ae-ni-za,  Table  p.  121. 

The  Arabs  thus  designate  Iran  or  Persia  ;  and  a  Persian 
is  with  them  Ajami  (p.'  270),  to  which  they  attach  the  sense 
of  barbariis — i.e.,  strange  or  foreign  in  origin,  speech,  and 
aspect. 

Etymologically,  the  stimip  or  ninip  of  anything ;  or  the 
being  behind-hand,  or  incapacitated,  in  respect  of  a  tiling ; 
whence  an  aged  woman,  pp.  232,  233. 

The  name  usually  given  by  the  Arabs  to  a  pass  over 
mountains,  pp.  23,  25,  29. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses.  Table  p.  263. 

Arab  saying  as  to  firing,  p.  184. 

The  organiser  and  leader  of  an  expedition,  p.  112  et  fn.  i. 

The  Arabic  def.  article.  [Before  certain  letters  of  the 
alphabet, — "dentals,"  "sibilants,"  and  "liquids,"  —  the  /of 
the  def.  art.,  though  expressed  in  writing,  is  passed  over  in 
pronunciation,  and  assimilated  to  the  following  consonant.] 

Often  mistaken  for  the  foregoing.  Used  as  prefix  of  that 
part  of  an  Arab's  name  which  indicates  his  family.  Perhaps 
a  variant  of  Ahl,  q.  v. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  ii. 

\^Race  of  A'bdn  'lla.']  A  subdivis.  of  the  Ij-las  Ae-ni-za, 
Table  p.    121. 

The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Ae-ni-za,  Table  p.  121. 

In  f  n.  I  p.  30,  "  Ismailism  "  was  mentioned.  In  this  con- 
nection the  "  Ismailians "  are  those  among  the  Shi-i'  who 
hold  Ismai'l,  the  seventh  in  descent  from  A'li,  to  have  been 
the  last  of  the  revealed  I-mams.  Out  of  the  Ismailians  there 
2  T 


jj'- 


GLOSS  A  RIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Alam  CiT- — continued. 


proceeded,  in  our  nth  century,  the  secret  military  and  re- 
hgious  sect  which  in  '  The  Book  of  Ser  Marco  Polo '  is  des- 
ignated the  "  Ashishin,"  and  which  is  known  in  Europe 
as  "  The  Assassins."  ^  One  of  the  numerous  mountain 
strongholds  of  "  The  Assassins "  was  Alamut  (p.  269), 
on  the  Elburz  range,  in  Persia.  It  has  been  generally 
assumed,  though  without  much  warrant,  that  that  was 
the  site  of  the  Elysium  to  which  the  following  passages  in 
Marco  Polo  relate  :  "  The  Old  Man  "  -—i.e.,  the  head  of  the 
Assassins — " .  .  .  had  caused  a  certain  valley  between  two 
mountains  to  be  inclosed,  and  had  turned  it  into  a  garden 
.  .  .  running  with  conduits  of  wine  and  milk  and  honey 
and  water,  and  full  of  lovely  women  for  the  delectation 
of  all  its  inmates.  And  sure  enough  the  Saracens  of  those 
parts  believed  that  it  was  Paradise  !  .  .  .  He  kept  at  his 
Court  a  number  of  the  youths  of  the  country,  from  twelve 
to  twenty  years  of  age,  such  as  had  a  taste  for  soldiering : 
and  these  ...  he  would  introduce  into  his  garden,  some 
four,  or  six,  or  ten,  at  a  time,  having  first  made  them  drink 
a  certain  potion  which  cast  them  into  a  deep  sleep.  .  .  . 
So  when  they  awoke,  they  found  themselves  in  the  garden. 
.  .  .  And  the  ladies  and  damsels  dallied  with  them  to  their 
hearts'  content,  so  that  they  had  what  young  men  would 
have.  .  .  .  And  when  he  [the  Prince  whom  we  call  the  Old 
One]  wanted  one  of  his  Ashishin  to  send  on  any  mission, 
he  would  cause  that  potion  whereof  I  spoke  to  be  given 
to  one  of  the  youths  in  the  garden,  and  then  had  him  carried 
into  his  Palace.  So  when  the  young  man  awoke,  he  found 
himself  in  the  Castle,  and  no  longer  in  that  Paradise,  whereat 
he  was  not  over  well  pleased.  ...  So  when  the  Old  Man 
would  have  any  Prince  slain,  he  would  say  to  such  a  youth, 
'  Go  thou,  and  slay  so  and  so  ;  and  when  thou  returnest,  my 
Angels  shall  bear  thee  into  Paradise.  And  shouldest  thou 
die,  natheless  even  so  will  I  send  my  Angels  to  carry  thee 
back  into  Paradise.  So  he  caused  them  to  believe ;  and  thus 
there  was  no  order  of  his  that  they  would  not  affront  any 
peril  to  execute,  for  the  great  desire  they  had  to  get  back 
into  that  Paradise  of  his."  [K  Marco  Polo,  Bk.  I.  chs.  xxiii., 
xxiv.,  et  XXV.] 


In  our  13th  century,  Hulagu,  the  Tatar,  completely  broke 
the  power  of  the  "Assassins"  in  Persia,  slaying  about  12,000 


^  Sir  H.  Yule  sanctions  the  interpretation  that  tlie  Fi- 
dd-iuts,  or  Fi-dd-is  {devotees),  of  the  "Old  One's"  Para- 
dise were  called  Ha-sht'Shin  from  their  use  of  the  drug 
hashish,  and  that  the  modern  application  of  the  word 
' '  Assassin  "  thus  originated. 

-  In  the  time  of  the  Crusades  an  offshoot  of  the  "Assassins" 


of  Persia  flourished  in  Syria.  The  Crusaders  called  the 
chief  of  these  Lebanon  sectaries  "The  Old  Man  of  the 
Mountain, "  a  translation  of  his  popular  Arabic  title,  Shaikhi 
H  ja-bal.  It  has  not  been  ascertained,  but  it  is  probable, 
that  the  same  title  was  borne  by  the  prince  of  the  Alamut 
"  Assassins"  also. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


331 


AlamCt — continued. 


Al  bu   Muhammad    [bu   for 

ABU]. 

Al  hamdu  l'  Illah 

Al   harb   si-jal  ;  yaum   la- 

NA  :   YAUM    A'LAI-NA. 

Al  Him-zan    .... 
Al  Ka-mi        .... 

Al  kha-in  kha-if 

Al   Khair   ma'-kud   fi   na- 

wA-si  'l  khail,  i-la  yau- 

mi  'l  ki-ya-ma. 
Al  Kham-sa  .... 


A'Ll 


A'li  bin  Khu-dhai-ri 


of  them.  A  few  years  afterwards,  the  Syrian  branch  was 
nearly  extirpated  by  Bibars,  the  Mameluke  Sultan  of  Egypt. 
How  times  change  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  circum- 
stance that  the  lineal  descendants  of  Ha-san  ibn  Sa-ba,  the 
founder  of  the  "  Assassins,"  have  for  three  generations  lived 
quietly  at  Poena,  Bombay,  or  Bangalore.  The  title  of  "Agha 
Khan  "  is  that  by  which  the  family  is  now  best  known.  An 
ex-Governor  of  Bombay,  writing  when  the  Agha  Khan  who 
first  sought  refuge  in  India  was  still  alive,  thus  remarked  : 
"  His  sons,  popularly  known  as  the  '  Persian  Princes,'  are 
active  sportsmen,  and  age  has  not  dulled  the  Agha's  enjoy- 
ment of  horse-racing.  Some  of  the  best  blood  of  Arabia 
is  always  to  be  found  in  his  stables.  He  spares  no  expense 
on  his  racers  ;  and  no  prejudice  of  race  or  religion  prevents 
his  availing  himself  of  the  science  and  skill  of  an  English 
trainer  or  jockey  when  the  races  come  round.  Lads  who 
learned  to  ride  on  Epsom  Downs  may  be  seen  carrying  his 
colours  to  the  front  on  horses  bred  in  the  stony  valleys  of 
Najd.  The  Agha  is  always  present,  eyeing  the  contest  with 
as  keen  an  interest  as  forty  years  ago  he  would  have  watched 
a  charge  of  horse  on  the  plains  of  Khurasan  or  Kandahar." 
[  V.  two  papers  on  Tlie  KIwjas :  The  Disciples  of  the  Old  Man 
of  ike  Mountains,  by  the  late  Sir  H.  B.  E.  Frere,  in  '  Mac- 
millan's  Magazine,'  vol.  xxxiv.  pp.  342-350  et  430-438.] 
An  I'raki  horde,  p.  84  f.n.  i. 

The  common  expression  of  the  Arabs,  p.  38  et  f  n.  3. 
A  saying  of  the  Arabs,  p.  128. 

[Children  of  Hini-sdn.]    A  subdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar,  p.  1 22. 

The  name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi. 

A  saying  of  the  Arabs,  p.  137. 

Thus  may  be  written  the  "  Saying  "  of  the  Prophet  which 
in  the  original  Arabic  letters  adorns  our  title-page.  At  p. 
158  the  "Saying"  is  translated. 

[The  Five.]  Sc,  the  five  great  central  and  parallel  lines 
of  blood  in  which  the  Bedouin  Arabs  consider  all  their 
established  strains  of  horses  now  to  run,  pp.  233,  234,  236, 
237,  241,  252,  261,  267,  269,  295.     Table  of  Al  Kham-SA,  p. 

23S- 

The  five  fingers  of  the  right  hand,  p.  191  et  f  n  2,  293. 

The  five  plenishings  of  an  Arab  bride,  p.  234. 

A  very  old  proper  name.  The  best  known  bearer  of  it  was 
A'li  idn  Abi  Ta-lib,  the  fourth  Arabian  Caliph :  for  references 
to  whom  V.  pp.  106  f.n.  3,  159,  160,  239  et  f.n.  3  ;  and  in  art. 
SUN-NI  AND  Shi-i',  infra. 

The  Baghdad  horse-dealer,  p.  271. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Allah 


[Al]  A-mIr 

[PI.  U-MA-RA] 
A'-MIR 


Am-lah 

A' MR 


A'MtJD 
A'NA 

An-sab 


A'n-tar   . 

[For  A'n-ta-ra.] 


A'n-zu  'd  Dar-wish 
[Al]  A'rabu  'l  A'riba  . 
A'rabu  'l  A'ribati  'l  ba-i- 

DA. 

A'rabu  'l  Kib-l1   . 


A'-RA-FA   . 

A'rak 
Ar-bIl 


\_Al,  the  def.  article,  et  i-Wi,  an  object  of  awe,  reverence,  or 
zvorship?\  The  Arabic  form,  Allah  {passim),  is  thus  a 
development  of  the  very  ancient  god-name  El,  out  of  which, 
in  every  Semitic  speech,  the  name  expressive  of  the  unspecial- 
ised  deity  has  proceeded.  Max  Miiller  thus  observes,  in  Intro- 
duction to  tlie  Science  of  Religion,  p.  179,  "  In  Arabic,  .  .  . 
Allah  becomes  the  name  of  the  God  of  Muhammad,  as  it  was 
the  name  of  the  God  of  Abraham  and  of  Moses." 

In  the  sense  of  king  (synonyms,  Malik,  and,  less  usually, 
Siiltdn),  pp.  17,  39  f.n.  2,  4.0-4S  passim. 

[Living  long.^  A  Bedouin  proper  name  ;  after  a  bearer  of 
which  is  called  a  sub-strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN, 
Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses,  Table  p.  263. 

One  of  the  Seven  poets  of  THE  Mu-a'l-la-kat,  g.  v. 
infra;  Translations  from  A'mr's  poem,  pp.  42,  104  fn.  i, 
117,  130  f.n.  4,  240. 

[Supports,  esp.  tent-poles.]  A  subdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar,  p. 
122  et  f.n.  5. 

A  town  on  W.  bank  of  the  Euphrates,  160  miles  N.W.  of 
Baghdad,  pp.  12,  6j. 

[PI.  of  n2isd.~\  Settings  7/p  of  the  class  described  in  Gen. 
XXXV.,  the  primitive  type  of  all  later  "  altars,"  p.  54  f  n.  2. 
Et  v.  art.  Baitu  'llah,  i^ifra. 

A  renowned  warrior  and  raconteur  of  pagan  Arabia,  whose 
classic  poem  is  included  in  the  Mu-a'L-LA-KAT,  q.  v.  infra. 
There  also  exists  a  romantic  account  of  A'ntar's  adventures, 
in  rhythmic  prose  interspersed  with  verses,  which,  after  being 
printed  at  Alexandria  and  Beyrout,  has  been  translated  into 
English.  Translation  from  Antar'S  poem,  p.  221.  Other 
references  to,  pp.  56,  106  f.n.  2,  112  fn.  i,  136,  234,  237. 

[Goat,  or  wild  goat,  of  the  dervise.]  The  name  of  a  strain 
in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  so-called  Arabian,  i.e.  (comparatively)  indigenous, 
inhabitants  of  the  Arab  peninsula,  p.  98  f  n.  2. 

A  collective  name  for  the  prehistoric  inhabitants  of 
Arabia,  p.  97  f.n.  i. 

[Arabs  of  the  South.']  Comprehensive  appellation  of  cer- 
tain great  masses  of  the  Bedouin,  or  quasi  Bedouin,  Arabs, 
p.  271  fn.  2. 

Name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Sba'  Ae-ni-za,  Table  p.  121. 

As  origin  of  naturalised  word  arrack,  p.  119  fn.  i. 

One  of  the  many  dwindled  Assyrian  cities  which  the  Porte 
now  possesses.  Its  situation  between  the  two  Zab  (or  Ui-ab) 
rivers,  near  the  mountain  barriers  of  Persia,  makes  it  a  good 
military  post.  Near  it  the  empire  of  Asia  transferred  itself 
(331  B.C.)  from  Darius  to  Alexander.  Once  again  (a.D.  749) 
the    same    locality    witnessed    a    decisive     battle,    when    the 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


333 


A'-RIDH     . 
AR-JA-Si    . 

Ar-ka-bi 
Ar-na-bi  . 

As-a'f 

A-sA-lat 

A-SAS 

As-dA 

AS-DAF       . 

As-far     . 
[Al]  A'-sha 
P.  177  f.n.  I. 

As-hab     . 
A-sha-ji-a' 
Ash-a'l    . 
Ash-hab  . 

ASH-KAR  . 
A-SIL 

Ask-abAd 


AS-LAM 

[Al]    As-ma'-i,    Abu    Sa-i'd 
a'bdi  'l  Malik,  ibn  Ku- 

RAIB. 

P.  98. 


AS-WAD 

A't-fa 


last  prince  of  the  Damascus  dynasty  received  his  quietus 
from  the  soldier  of  fortune,  Abu  Mus-lim,  and  Syria  was 
overrun  by  Persians.  Pp.  62  fn.  2,  159  f.n.  5. 

\_P resenting  itself.']      Name  of  a  province  in  Najd,  pp.  32 

f.n.  I,  43- 

The  name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-lAn,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi. 

[^Having  large  knees.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham- 
SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  ii. 

[From  ar-nab,  a  hare.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham- 
SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  ii. 

"  Thorough-breeding,"  pp.  94,  245  et  seq. 

The  parts  of  a  horse  from  the  knee  downward,  p.  178. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses,  Table  p.  262. 

\Ttirning  azvay  from.]  Said  of  a  horse  whose  fore-legs 
incline  outward,  p.  200. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses.  Table  p.  263. 

Mai-mtm,  Al  A'-sha,  was  an  Arabian  poet  of  the  Prophet's 
era.  Some  authorities  would  have  included  his  masterpiece 
in  the  Mu-a'l-LA-kAt,  q.  v.  infra. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses.  Table  p.  263. 

Name  of  a  horde  of  the  Ij-las  Ae-ni-za,  Table  p.  121. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses,  Table  p.  263. 

Table  p.  263. 
„  „  Table  p.  262. 

As  applied  to  breed  or  pedigree,  pp.  94,  138,  236,  245  et  seq. 

A  settlement,  now  a  Russian  post  and  railway  station, 
within  400  miles  of  Hirat,  in  the  great  oasis  called  Atok  of 
the  Turcoman  desert,  p.  274  fn.  i. 

S^Sonnd?\  Asubdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar  Bedouin,p.  I22e/fn.  5. 

One  of  the  authorities  quoted  in  the  romance  of  A'n-tar  ; 
but  not,  as  is  sometimes  represented,  the  author  of  the  poem, 
which  belongs  to  a  much  later  period.  "  El  As-ma'-i  "  was  born 
at  Bussorah,  c.  "jAfl  A.D.  In  the  palmy  days  of  Ha-runu  'r 
Ra-shid  he  formed  one  of  the  principal  attractions  of  Baghdad. 
A  European  writer  has  described  him  as  "the  almost  perfect 
type  of  those  nomadic  devotees  of  literature  who,  after  they 
had  grown  pale  on  the  benches  of  Bussorah  or  Kufa,  went  to 
complete  their  education  in  the  desert,  in  the  possession  of 
boundless  stores  of  learning,  and  yet  animated  by  an  en- 
thusiasm for  further  acquisition  which  made  them  willing 
to  travel  across  the  sands  for  hundreds  of  leagues,  if  only 
they  might  preserve  an  ancient  tradition,  or  pick  up  the  frag- 
ments of  an  ancient  song." 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses,  Table  p.  262. 

[Inclining,  esp.  toivards.]  The  Bedouin  girl  who,  on  great  oc- 
casions, leads  the  tribesmen  towards  the  enemy,  p.  127  ctLn.  i. 


334 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Au-SAM     .....  Specimens  of  ■ 

Aw-WAL     RA-FIK,     THUM-MA         A  saying  of  the  Arabs,  p.  293. 
TA-RIK. 

Az-ba-r! 


,  or  camel  brands,  p.  6^  f  n. 


AZ-LAM      . 

[PL  of  sa- 


laJH.I 


AZ-RAK 


[Large  between  the  shotilders^  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al 
Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

[Arrozus.]  The  rods  by  means  of  which  the  Arabs,  in  the 
time  of  Ignorance,  sought  to  know  what  was  allotted  to  them. 
They  did  so  by  making  certain  marks  on  the  arrows,  placing 
them  in  a  receptacle,  and  then  drawing  them.  This  practice 
put  down  by  Muhammad,  p.  54  fn.  2.  [From  Ezek.  xxi. 
21,  we  know  that  the  Semite  Babylonians  used  divining 
arrows,  at  the  same  time  that  they  inspected  entrails,  as  a 
means  of  guidance.  For  divination  in  Israel,  v.  Zech.  x.  2. 
A  very  late  survival  of  the  "  praying  and  drawing  lots  "  usage 
is  depicted  in  Sz/as  Marner,  ch.  i.] 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses.  Table  p.  263. 


Bab  . 
Bab  I  A'li 


Bab-il,  Bab-ili,  Bab-el 
[Gr.  form  Babylon.] 


BAbtj  'l  Man-dab  . 


BA-DI-A     . 

Ba-di-atu  'l  I'rak 

Ba-DI-ATU  'L  jAZfRA 

Ba-di-atu  'sh  sham 
Badr,  Badar,  Bedr 

Bad-w 


B 


A  doorway,  or  entrance. 

\_Lofty  entrance.']  The  Osmanlis'  name  for  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter's official  residence  ;  whence  "  Sublime  Porte  "  has  come  to 
signify  H.  I.  Majesty  the  Sultan's  Government,  p.  yd>. 

[Gate  of  God.]  In  the  language  of  the  ancient  Su- 
mirian  and  Akkadian  inhabitants  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia, 
the  name  of  the  capital  was  Ka-di-mir-ra  (by  some  written 
"  Ka-dingira ") ;  and  the  Semitic  rendering  of  this  word  is 
Bab-el,  or  Bab-ili.  P.  78. 

Straits  of ,  which  connect  the  Red  Sea  and  the 

Indian  Ocean,  pp.  23,  99  fn.  4.  [Man-dab  equally  means 
place  of  %veeping,zxid.  place  of  summons.  Either  interpretation 
may  connect  the  site  with  the  geographical  legend  that 
the  existing  separation  between  Arabia  and  Africa  was 
here  effected  ;  according  to  one  account,  through  a  natural 
catastrophe,  and  according  to  another  account,  through  the 
labours  of  workmen  whom  a  king  or  a  god   assembled.] 

The  desert,  p.  18. 

V.  arts.  Bad-w,  et  I'rak,  infra.  P.  65. 

V.  arts.  Bad-w,  et  Jazira,  infra.  P.  65. 

V.  arts.  Bad-w,  et  Sham,  infra.  P.  65. 

[TJie  fidl  round  moo7t?^  At  p.  40  fn.  i,  Badr,  the  son  of 
Ti-lal,  prince  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar. 

[TJie  being  plain,  or  open.]  From  this  root  come  bai-dd,  et 
bd-di-a,  the  desert ;  and  ba-da-iui,  of  or  belonging  to  the  desert. 
The  pi.  oiba-da-wt  is  ba-da-zvi-ytl-na,  and,  in  the  oblique  cases, 
ba-da-wt-yi-na,  ex  quo,  our  form  "  Bedouin,"  q.  v.,  for  page 
references,  in  Index  ii. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


335 


Ba-gha     .        .        . 
Baghdad 

[For   page   references  v. 
dex  ii.] 


Bagh-LA  . 

[Al]  Bai-at     . 
Bai-da 
BA-i-Ri      . 
Bait 

P.  115  f.n.  3. 


Battu  'llah    . 


Pp.  54  f.n.  2,  115  fn.  2. 


Bakh-shish 


Bakht-i-a-r1 


Pp.  149  f.n.  I,  284. 


Ringbone,  p.  178  et  f.n.  i. 

The  well-known  city  on  the  Tigris,  about  500  miles  inland 
In-  from  the  sea.  Not  long  ago,  all  the  country  from  Mosul  to 
the  Sea  of  Persia  constituted  one  large  Ottoman  Pashalik, 
which  was  administered  from  Baghdad.  The  same  districts 
are  now  arranged  in  the  three  governorships  of  Mosul, 
Baghdad,  and  Bussorah. 

The  modern  Baghdad  is  near,  but  not  on,  the  site  of  the 
capital  of  the  Abbaside  princes — the  Baghdad  of  Ha-runu  'r 
Ra-shid  (a.D.  786-809),  the  Barmecide  family,  and  The  Thou- 
sand and  One  Nights. 

A  city  of  Babylonia  named  Bakdadu,  or  Pakdadji  (possibly 
Khiidadu),  has  recently  been  traced  in  the  Assyrian  geo- 
graphical catalogues  of  the  time  of  Assur-bani-pal,  the  "  Sar- 
danapalus "  of  the  Greeks.  This  cannot  be  the  Baghdad 
which  we  know ;  but  the  name  may  have  descended  from  the 
one  city  to  the  other. 

The  Baghdad  of  our  day  is  little  better  than  a  heap  of 
relics,  wrapped  in  a  bright  but  tattered  covering. 

{A  female  mtde?[  Name  given  by  the  Arabs  to  one  of 
their  largest  kinds  of  sailing  craft,  p.  260. 

Peasant  squatters  of  N.E.  Prak,  p.  84  fn.  i. 

Synonym  of  bd-di-a,  p.  18. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

Perhaps  the  simplest,  or  radical,  meaning  of  this  word  is, 
the  being  in  a  place,  zuhether  in  the  night-time  or  tlie  day-time. 
But  practically,  bait  signifies  a  tent,  or  even  a  more  permanent 
habitation,  as  in  Gen.  xxxiii.  17. 

[  V.  arts.  Bait,  et  Ka'-BA.]  Etymologically,  Baitn  'llah 
and  Beth-el  are,  of  course,  but  slightly  different  forms  of  one 
name.  The  Semitic  "Baitulia"  of  antiquity,  we  know,  were 
not  houses.  Acts  of  worship  consecrated  them ;  but  the 
Deity  was  not  supposed  to  inhabit  them.  And  at  this  day 
the  same  remark  is  applicable  to  the  "  Baitu  'llah"  of  Mecca. 

A  Persian  word,  meaning  a  present  or  gratuity,  p.  175. 
[It  may  be  very  true  that,  in  the  East,  the  thirst  for  bakh- 
shish savours  of  beggary.  But  those  of  our  countrymen 
whose  duties  lie  in  Asia  or  Africa  should  remember  that  the 
best  kinds  of  dependants  value  an  occasional  "  little  present  " 
from  a  master,  more  highly  than  they  do  their  regular  wages.] 

The  name  of  the  great  mountain  series  which  separates  the 
lower  Tigris  from  the  Ispahan  plain.  The  strongholds  and 
pastures  of  the  Bakht-i-a-ri  nation  are  contained  within  these 
rugged  spaces.  The  Bakht-i-a-ri  are  absolutely  lawless ; 
but  a  considerable  degree  of  nobility  and  elevation  charac- 
terises them.  They  are  divided  into  greater  and  smaller 
clans.  They  boast  that  they  are  of  the  old  Lu-ri  blood  ;  and 
they  look  down  on  the  Shah  and  his  nobles  as  foreigners. 


336 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Ba-kil-la 
BA-Ktr-RA 


Ba'l  [Biblical  "  Baal "] 


Ba-lad 

Ba-lis 
Ba-l1-ya 


Ba-na-tu  'l  A'-waj 

Ban-dar  . 

Ba-nu  Hijr     . 

Ba-nu  Is-ra-1l 

Ba-nCt  Kalb    . 

BA-Ntr  Kha-lid 
Ba-niCt  Lam     . 


The  tall  spring  bean  of  El  I'rak,  p.  82  f.n.  i. 

The  short  stick,  often  of  almond,  having  a  crook  at  the 
thicker  end,  with  which  the  Arab  seizes  his  camel's  nose- 
ring and  his  mare's  halter,  p.  150.  [A  more  classical  name 
for  the  ba-kA-ra  is  miJi-jan.  It  is  also  called  the  viish-db 
and  the  m2igh-an?\ 

Equally  in  Arabic  and  in  other  cognate  speeches,  ^«'/ means 
master,  or  ozvner ;  and  it  has  been  seen,  p.  240  et  f  n.  2,  that 
at  least  as  far  back  as  a.d.  c.  550,  the  Arab  women  spoke 
of  their  husbands  under  this  name.  From  remote  ages,  suc- 
cessful expeditions  have  meant  for  Semites  a  fresh  supply 
of  wives.  The  tradition  existed  in  ancient  Arabia  that  the 
strongest  children  were  those  born  of  reluctant  mothers.  The 
Arab  bridal  procession  still  presents  the  semblance  of  raiders 
bringing  back  a  maiden.  The  poet  A'mr  mentioned  dis- 
tribution, sc.  by  captors,  as  among  the  dangers  against  which 
the  desert  gallants  were  bound  to  defend  the  free-born  Arab 
spouses  who  accompanied  them  in  their  migrations. 

Any  tract  comprehended  within  certain  limits,  p.  5.  [Pro- 
fessor Noldeke  considers  ba-lad  to  be  the  Latin  Palatiiim.'] 
Ba-lad  mat,  a  dead,  or  deserted,  town,  p.  251. 

Ruins  on  the  Euphrates  which  are  held  to  mark  the  spot 
where  the  river  issues  into  "  Northern  Arabia,"  p.  65. 

[  Worn  out,  as  zvith  travel,  or  stai^vation.']  The  mare,  or  she- 
camel,  tied  beside  the  dead  man's  grave,  according  to  the 
ancient  Bedouin  usage,  which  is  mentioned  at  p.  130  et  fn.  5. 
[We  have  diligently  sought  for  evidence  showing  that  any  of 
the  Bedouin  still  tie  up  the  ba-li-ya.  Every  townsman,  and 
every  desert  Arab,  has  heard  of  this  custom  ;  and  several 
people  have  informed  us  that  they,  or  others  whom  they 
knew,  had  seen  it  practised  ;  but  such  statements  are  not  to 
be  trusted.  The  pastoral  Todas  who  inhabit  the  mountains 
of  Southern  India,  when  one  of  their  number  dies,  slaughter 
buffaloes,  under  the  belief  that  the  deceased  will  drink  their 
milk  in  the  place  to  which  he  has  departed.] 

The  name,  according  to  tradition,  of  a  very  ancient  race  of 
Arabian  horses,  p.  306. 

Eldest  son,  and,  after  his  uncle  Mut-a'b,  successor,  of  Amir 
Ti-lal  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  p.  40  et  fn.  i. 

A  Bedouin  nation  of  the  Persian  Gulf  littoral,  p.  59 
fn.  2. 

{Race  of  Israel,  p.  104  et  fn.  2.]  The  name  of  an  African 
antelope,  p.  99  f.n.  4. 

\Race  of  Dog:\  Nomad  hordes  which  spread  from  Yemen 
northward,  p.  116  fn.  2. 

A  considerable  Bedouin  nation,  pp.  29,  58,  59  fn.  2. 

A  confederation  of  tribes,  partly  settled  and  partly  nomadic, 
p.  84  fn.  I. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


Ba-nCt  Sakhr 
P.  271. 


BA-Ntr  Yas 


BA-RA-Zi-YA       . 

Ba-ri-da-tu  'l  Jauf 

Bar-ja-sI-ya    . 
Bashi-bazouk 

Ba-t1n 

Beg  .... 


Bey  . 
Bi-l1kh    . 

Bil-kis     . 
Bint 

BiNTU   A'MM 
BiR    . 


BiSHR 
BUH-THA  . 

Bu-khA-r1 

BUNN 
BU-RAI-DA 


BUSSORAH,    for    Bas-ra    [Sin- 
bad's  "  Bidsorah  "]. 
For   page    references    v.    In- 
dex ii. 


An  important  division  of  the  Ahlu  'SH  SHI-MAL  {q.  v.) 
Burckhardt  says  :  "  The  manly  persons,  broad  features,  and 
thick  beards  of  the  Ba-nu  Sakhr  are  no  proofs  of  Bedouin 
origin  ;  yet  they  pride  themselves  on  being  the  only  descen- 
dants of  Ba-nu  A'bs,  an  ancient  Najd  tribe,  famous  in  Bedouin 
history."     {Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No.  15,  vol.  i.  p.  23.) 

\_Race  of  Yas.'\  A  seaboard  people  of  Oman,  p.  100.  [In 
Arabic  the  myrtle  is  As.  Our  jasmine,  or  jessamine,  is  in 
Arabic  and  Persian  yd-sim,  yd-sa-man,  et  yd-sa-mtn?\ 

Horse-breeders  of  N.W.  Al  jAZfRA,  pp.  75,  272,  273. 

A  Bedouin  term  for  what  we  should  call  half-bred  horses, 
p.  272  f  n.  2. 

A  well-oasis,  near  Zu-bair,  p.  212. 

[In  the  Turkish  army,  the  " Bdshi-bd.zuk  "  soldiery  are  those 
whose  dress  and  equipments  are  not  uniform.]     P.  188. 

A  term  of  the  Arab,  and  especially  of  the  Bedouin,  geo- 
graphy, p.  75  f  n.  I. 

[Fem.  Beo-atu.]  A  Tatar  word  for  lord,  which  the  Mon- 
gols, or  Mughals,  carried  into  India,  and  the  Osmanlis  into 
Arabia.  In  the  latter  country,  in  towns,  as  Beg,  and  in  the 
desert,  as  Bej,  it  supplies  a  title  of  respect  for  Europeans.  In 
Africa,  it  is  softened  into  Bey.  Pp.  149,  295. 

Pp.  152,  282. 

A  sister  affluent  with  the  Kha-bur,  (on  the  left)  of  the 
Euphrates,  in  N.  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  pp.  75,  82,  in  f.n.  i,  272. 

The  name  of  a  Queen  of  the  kingdom  of  Sa-ba,  p.  27. 

[A  daughter ?\^  V.  IBN.  As  entering  into  epithets,  p.  34 
f.n.  I. 

Daughter  of  a  paternal  zmcle,  p.  94. 

[A  pit,  usually  one  at  the  bottom  of  which  there  is  water.] 
The  name  of  a  very  old  town  on  the  eastern  bank  of  the 
Upper  Euphrates,  p.  74. 

A  collective  name  for  certain  divisions  of  the  Aeniza,  pp. 
39  fn.  I,  126. 

Bovine  antelope  of  Najd,  p.  145  f.n.  i. 

The  celebrated  Muslim  jurist  ,  quoted,  p.  xii  of  pre- 
fixes of  volume,  fn.  2. 

\^An  aromatic  odour,  as  of  a  sheepfold  or  a  cattle-pen.']  The 
coffee-plant,  and  berry,  p.  no  fn.  2. 

One  of  the  two  great  clay  townships  of  Middle  Najd.  The 
population  may  be  5000 ;  comprising  merchants  and  cara- 
vaners  {v.  Agel)  to  whom  every  town  and  trade-route  equally 
in  peninsular  and  N.  Arabia  are  known,  pp.  32  f.n.  i,  210. 

\^Soft  ground,  esp.  such  as  glistens  v/ith  gypsum,  or  other 
whiteness.']  The  well-known  open  port,  about  seventy  miles 
above  the  Persian  Gulf,  on  the  Ottoman  (western)  bank  of 
the  Shattu  'l  A'rab  {q.  v.)  A  considerable  emporium  of 
commerce,  and  a  date-garden  both  of  Europe  and  America. 
2  u 


338 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


BUSSORAH — continued. 


Btr-STAN    . 

But-lI-ya 


The  present  city  is  modern.  The  old  city  (founded  A.D.  636 
by  the  Caliph  O'mar)  stood  on  a  canal  S.W.  from  the  present 
site.  Bussorah  must  not  be  confounded  with  Bostra,  Bozra, 
or  Buzra,  Trajan's  capital  of  Roman  Arabia  (now  a  ruin), 
on  the  Damascus  Hajj  road. 

\_Place  of  fragrance,  i.e.  a  garden.]  The  title  of  a  classical 
Persian  poem,  quoted  p.  114  f.n.  i. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 


Cairo 
For   page 
dex  ii. 

ChAr-dak 


Chol 


references   v.    In- 


A  very  ancient  name  for  Egypt  and  for  its  capital  city  is 
Misr ;  and  the  title  of  the  capital  is  Al  Kd-hi-ra  (meaning, 
Victrix,  Augusta,  and  the  like),  which  Europeans  have  short- 
ened into  Cairo. 

[Persian,  Char  tdk,  four  pillars^  The  name,  with  the 
Osmanli  and  the  Persians,  of  the  summer  kiosks,  supported 
on  pillars,  and  open  towards  the  cool  quarters,  in  which  the 
sultry  hours  are  spent,  p.  81. 

\Not  Arabic]  Used  in  El  I'-rak  as  "jungle"  is  in  India, 
p.  19. 


D 


Dah-man 
[Ad]  Dah-na  . 
Dah-wa   . 

Da-i'r 

Daj-ja-ni 


Da-kh1l  . 

Pp.  36,  37  fn.  3. 


The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-hai-lan,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi.,  et  V.  Table  of  Colours,  p.  262. 

The  great  southern  desert  of  the  Arabian  peninsula,  pp. 

25.  34>  37- 

The  name  of  a  sub-strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-hai-lan, 
Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

[Keeping  to  the  tent,  familiar.']  (A  rd-zvi-a  uses  the  word 
for  trained  or  dojuestic  hounds.)  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al 
Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

Guest  is  but  an  inadequate  rendering  of  this  essentially 
Arabian  word.  Lit.,  it  means,  one  who  enters ;  and  specially, 
one  luho  enters  into  the  protection  of  another.  There  are  various 
acts  by  the  doing  of  which,  according  to  the  ancient  law  of 
the  desert,  a  fugitive  or  a  captive  may  render  himself  entitled 
to  the  protection  and  hospitality  of  a  tent  or  a  tribe  of  the 
Bedouin.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  how  similar  conditions 
of  life  breed  similar  manners.  Thus  Dr  Johnson  saw,  in  a 
castle  wall  in  the  Hebrides,  an  inscription  intimating  that  "  if 
one  of  the  clan  Maclonich  shall  come  at  midnight  with  a 
man's  head  in  his  hand,  he  shall  there  find  safety  and  protec- 
tion against  all  but  the  king." 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


339 


Da-la-ma 
Dal-lal  . 

DA-MA 

P.  54-  f.n.  2. 


Da-ud 
DA-tr-Di-YA 


Daus 
Dau-sar  . 
Da-war    . 

Da-wA-sir 

Dem  or  Daim 
Der  . 


Dervish,  Dervise, 
P.  45- 


[^Multitude.']     Name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Aeniza,   Table 

p.   121. 

An  agent  between  two  parties,  p.  6g  et  f.n.  i. 

Draughts.  The  Arabian  history  of  this  game  is  unknown. 
In  Baghdad  they  play  it  with  sixteen  pieces  a  side,  on  a 
board  or  table  like  that  of  chess.  The  pieces  are  larger 
than  those  used  in  backgammon ;  and  they  are  not  moved 
diagonally,  but  straight  to  the  front,  and  laterally.  In  Spain, 
about  the  fifteenth  century,  chess  was  called  Axedres  de  la 
Daina.  In  the  old  classic  speech  of  Scotland,  the  word  for 
draughts  was  "  DAm." 

The  Arabic  form  of  the  proper  name  "  David,"  p.  io6. 

About  400  square  miles  of  El  I'rak,  between  Kif-ri  and 
Su-lai-ma-ni-ya,  are  occupied  by  a  clan  of  Kurds,  calling 
themselves  Da-u-di-ya,  after  a  legendary  Kuraishite  leader 
named  Da-ud  ibn  Su-lai-man.  The  wheat  which  these  Kurds 
produce  is  favourably  known  in  the  Baghdad  market.  At 
the  same  time,  they  are  far  from  peaceful ;  and  good  colts 
may  be  found  among  them.  P.  284. 

A  saddle-gall,  p.  142  f.n.  i. 

A  grass  of  El  I'rak,  p.  82  fn.  i. 

The  name  of  a  horde  of  El  I'rak,  p.  84  f.n.  i. 

As  the  name  of  a  region,  p.  32  fn.  i  ;  as  that  of  a  people, 
p.  59  f.n.  2. 

[From  di-via,  a  lasting  rain?[     P.  80  et  {.x\.  i. 

\Paur,  ddr,  du-zvdr,  der,  all  mean  in  Arabic  z.\\y  place  where 
people  have  alighted  and  tarried.  In  this  sense  the  word  has 
travelled  to  India — ^._^.,  "Dera  Is-ma-i'l  Khan,"  the  name  of 
a  station  ;  and  dera,  a  tent.  Before  Islam,  the  ra-hib — lit. 
fearer,  i.e.  of  God — lighted  his  taper  in  sequestered  places 
throughout  Arabia,^  and  dair  was  one  of  the  names  given  to 
his  hermitage.     See  art.  Ha-NIF,  infra.'] 

The  Der  of  these  pages  (pp.  68,  69,  72  fn.  i,  146,  150, 
291,  300)  is  a  settlement  of  the  Arabs,  and  a  military  post 
of  the  Osmanli  (under  Aleppo),  on  the  upper  portion  of  the 
Euphrates. 

Many  different  meanings,  none  of  which  are  Arabian, 
cluster  round  this  word.  The  root  idea  is  said  to  be  beorzins 
from  door  to  door.  Turkey  abounds  in  Dervishes.  In  Persia 
also,  and  Egypt,  Central  Asia,  and  India,  there  are  many 
varieties  of  this  order  ;  "  Pir,"  "  Murshid,"  "  Fa-kir,"  "  Shekh," 
and  the  like.  The  crowds  who  now  visit  Cairo  make  a  point 
of  seeing  its  "  Dancing  Dervishes."  The  gyrations  of  these 
votaries  are  in  some  schools  held  to  represent  or  follow  the 
circling  movement  of  the  spheres  ;  and  in  others,  the  cen- 
trifugal  vibrations    of  hearts   acted    on   by    strong    religious 


^  V.  translation  at  p.  49,  couplet  2. 


34° 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Dervish,  Dervise — contimied. 


"  Dervish  " 

Dhabl  . 
Dhab-y  . 
Dha-fIr  . 

DHA-LtJL  . 


Dhi-a-la 


Dhib-yan 
Dhif-ra  . 

Dhin  Im-n1'    . 
DhCt  'l  fa-kar 


DHt>  Nu'As     .... 
DHtr  'r  rum-ma 

Di-ar  eakr     .... 

Di-fa-fa'         .... 
[Ad]  Dij-la    .... 
For  page  references  v.  TIGRIS 
in  Index  ii. 


Di-MiSHKU    'SH     Sham  :    or, 
shortly,  Sham. 
For  page    references  v.  DA- 
MASCUS in  Index  ii. 

Din 


Di-RA 


influences.  But  our  countrymen  should  remember  that  all 
such  hare-brained  cultivators  of  kaif,  or  religious  quiescence, 
passing  into  ecstasy  or  worse,  and  all  pretenders  to  super- 
natural powers  and  endowments,  borrow  most  of  their 
doctrines  from  Gnostic  and  other  Aryan  sources. 

The  Arabian  horse,  portrait  in  group  facing  p.  252  ; 
other  references,  pp.   165,   169  ei  f.n.  2. 

Fitness,  or  condition,  in  a  horse,  p.  143  f.n.  3. 

One  of  the  Antelope  group,  p.  145  f.n.  i. 

A  Bedouin  nation  of  the  Lower  Euphrates,  pp.  59  f.n.  2, 

83- 

A  "  dromedary,"  or  swift  camel,  one-humped,  deep-chested, 

large-quartered,  and  highly  bred,  pp.  56,  57-      Cantata  of  the 

Arabs  about  their  dlia-h'd,  p.  61,  et  v.  f.n.  3  same  page. 

A  river  of  El  I'-rak  ;  about  400  miles  long,  from  its  rise  in 
Persia  to  its  junction  with  the  Tigris  below  Baghdad,  pp.  79, 
81,  82,  84  f.n.  I,  278,  282. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  place  in  the  back  of  the  camel's  neck  from  which  sweat 
first  exudes  when  the  beast  is  working,  p.  234. 

The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

[Possessoi^  0/  verte&7'(s.]  A'li's  famous  sword  was  so  named  ; 
possibly  from  its  high  temper  and  flexibility  ;  but  more  prob- 
ably because  scolloped  at  the  edges,  p.  239  f.n.  3. 

The  Himyarite  king,  p.  28. 

[Endozued  with  wealth  or  fertility^  Name  of  a  town  in 
Najd,  p.  32  f.n.  i. 

A  town  of  the  Upper  Tigris  ;  on  the  western  bank  of  the 
river,  N.E.  from  Aleppo.     [The  ancient  Amida.]  P.  63. 

A  horde  of  Lower  I'rak,  p.  84  f.n.  i. 

This  is  the  only  name  which  we  have  ever  heard  given  to 
the  Tigris  by  the  people  now  dwelling  on  its  banks.  Ety- 
mologists explain  that  the  "  Hiddekel "  of  Genesis,  and  the 
form  "Dij-la"  are  variants  of  one  and  the  same  name.  For 
Hid  is  but  a  prefix,  meaning  in  the  pre -Semitic  language, 
river ;  and  the  Akkadian  and  Assyro-Babylonian  forms  are 
Idigna,  and  Idiklat  (or  Diklat),  respectively.  In  the  Medo- 
Persic  language,  Tig-ra  means  an  arrow. 

The  well-known  capital  of  Sham  or  Syria  [Gen.  xv.  2]. 
Since  A.D.  634,  the  city  of  Saladin  has  occupied  a  unique 
place  in  El  Islam,  equally  under  the  Caliphs,  the  Egyptian 
Sultans,  and  the  Turks. 

An  old  word,  denoting  in  El  Is-LAM,  Religion,  in  the 
widest  sense  of  the  term,  practical  and  doctrinal.  V.  art. 
Is-LAM,  infra. 

[  V.  Der,  snpra.l  Most  of  the  divisions  of  the  Bedouin  have 
certain  recognised  wells  and  pastures  which  are  proper  to 
them  ;  and  such  constitute  the  tribe's  di-ra,  pp.  16,  21,  59- 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


341 


DiR-A' 


Dl-WAM 


Di-WAN  [or  Di-vaiil 


Dragoman 


[Ad]  Du-ghai-rat 

Dugh-mAn 
Du-KHi    . 

DU-LAIM   . 

DUL-DUL  . 
DU-NAIS    . 


DU-RAI-I'-YA 


DiiZ  Khur-mA-tu 


A  warrior's  jerkin,  of  mail  or  leather,  p.  104  f.n.  i.  [The 
first  meaning  of  dir-a!  is  the  long  shirt  which  the  Arab 
women  wear.  Im-ra-u  '1  Kais  depicts  a  growing  maiden  as 
"  between  the  dir-a!  and  the  mij-ival"  The  latter  is  the 
shorter  garment,  in  which  the  little  girls  run  about.  Thus 
the  Arab  poet  expresses  the  same  idea  as  that  conveyed  in 
the  lines  by  Longfellow — 

"  Standing  with  reluctant  feet 
Where  the  brook  and  river  meet. 
Womanhood  and  childhood  fleet."  ] 

[Root-idea,  stability.']  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Sba', 
Table  p.  121,  298. 

An  Aryan  word,  which  is  now  diffused  over  Central  Asia 
and  Persia,  Turkey,  India,  Arabia,  and  parts  of  Africa.  The 
following  are  some  of  its  meanings  : — A  list  or  roll.  An  ii?i- 
perial  council.  President  of  such,  whence  vizier  or  minister. 
A  Jiall  of  audience  or  assembly.  In  India,  under  the  E.I.  Co., 
the  body  of  superior  native  officers;  whence  the  revenue  and 
financial  administration.  Still  more  curiously,  a  rotatory 
dance  of  sun-worshippers.  Out  of  the  first  of  these  senses 
there  comes  that  in  which  the  word  occurs  at  pp.  49  f.n.  i, 
179  fn.  I — viz.,  a  series  of  poems  ;  while  at  p.  161  it  signifies 
a  Turkish  official's  rooi/i.  In  Europe  it  often  means  a 
cafe. 

Some  identify  this  word  with  tar-ju-mdn,  which,  though 
post-classical,  is  included  in  Arabic  dictionaries,  with  the 
meaning  of  translator,  p.  297. 

[PL  of  dii-ghair,  one  zvho  rushes,  esp.  to  snatch  a  thing.]  A 
subdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar,  p.  122. 

The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Ru-\va-la  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

The  name  of  a  strain  of  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

A  Bedouin  nation  of  the  Euphrates,  whose  pastures  begin 
about  three  days  N.W.  of  Baghdad,  pp.  84  f.n.  i,  85. 

The  name  of  one  of  the  Prophet's  riding-mules,  p.  230. 

\Grimy.'\  The  sobriquet  of  a  well-known  family  in  the 
Aeniza,  from  whom  the  name  has  passed  to  a  strain  of  Al 
Kham-SA  for  which  their  tents  are  noted,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

[From  Dir-a',  q.  v.  sipra.]  The  first  capital  of  the  Wahabite 
empire,  pp.  58,  162,  164.  [Instead  of  rebuilding  the  city  of 
A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab's  preaching  after  its  demolition  (18 18)  by 
Egyptian  soldiers,  the  inhabitants  transferred  themselves  to 
Ar  Ri-adh  {q.  v.),  four  miles  off".  Only  soil-bound  cultivators 
remained  behind  in  date-gardens  amid  the  broken  walls  and 
fortifications.] 

A  small  town  on  the  post-road  between  Baghdad  and 
Mosul,  p.  84  fn.  I. 


342 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Fad-dA-gha    . 

Fahd 

Fai-sal    . 
FAl  . 


Fa-laj  [pi.  Af-laj] 

Fa-lat     .        .        .  . 

Fal-lah  [pi.  Fal-ld-hhi] 

Fal-lu-ja 

Fan-tas  .        .        .  . 

Fa-ras     .        .        .  . 

Fa-rat     .        .        .  . 

Far-han  .        .        .  ■     . 

Fa-ris      .        .        .  . 


Fendi 


Fez 


[For/^j.] 


Fid-a'n 


[Root-meaning,  pounding,  or  mauling^  A  subdivis.  of  the 
Sham-mar,  p.  122  et  f.n.  5. 

The  Lynx.  Shekh  Fahd,  of  the  Ibn  Hadh-dhal  Arabs, 
p.  83.  Remarks  on  the  use  ol  fahd  zs  a  proper  name  by  the 
Bedouin  Arabs,  p.  107. 

[One  who  divides,  adjudicates,  governs?[  Amir  Fai-sal  of 
Najd,  pp.  36,  40,  42,  103  f.n.  i,  250,  251,  261. 

An  omen,  p.  54  f.n.  2.  [In  the  East,  it  is  chiefly  among 
educated  Arab  Muslim  of  the  strict  Kuranic  school  that 
exceptional  persons  who  absolutely  repudiate  omens  are 
met  with.  The  masses  of  the  people  are  still  liable,  after 
overcoming  every  moral  and  prudential  consideration  against 
an  undertaking,  to  be  turned  back  from  it  by  the  cry  of 
a  night  -  bird,  the  braying  of  an  ass,  or  the  advice  of  a 
mulla.] 

A  labyrinthine  and  fertile  tract  in  Najd,  pp.  32  f  n.  i,  98  f  n.  3. 

The  empty  desert,  p.  19. 

[Root-meaning, /'/o?/o-/^;«_o-.]     Peasantry,  p.  15. 

As  a  name  for  peasant  settlements,  p.  98  f.n.  3. 

P.  150  eti.n.  2,  152. 

Generically,  the  horse  ;  in  El  I'rak,  restricted  to  the  mare, 
p.  238  f.n.  2. 

{Outstripping?^  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA, 
Table  p.  235  col.  v. 

\_Joyous?\  A  name  much  given  by  the  Bedouin  equally  to 
their  boys  and  to  their  colts.  The  late  Shekh  Far-han,  of 
the  Sham-mar,  pp.  72,   122  fn.  5,   125. 

[Horseman?^  A  proper  name  among  the  Bedouin.  Refer- 
ences to  the  present  Shekh  Fa-ris  of  the  Sham-mar,  pp.  72 
et  f.n.  I,  122,  125,  129.  [The  idea  in  fd-ris  corresponds  with 
that  of  cavalier.  The  title  is  only  applicable  to  a  liur,  i.e.  a 
gentleman  and  armiger^ 

Has  the  same  meaning  as  fa-kJiidh,  i.e.,  a  limb,  branch,  or 
family  group,  within  a  horde  or  clan,  p.  122. 

The  red,  or  white,  round  woollen  cap  which  the  Osmanli 
wear.  The  Arabs,  when  they  assume  the  fez,  wind  a  turban 
round  it.  The  European  employees  of  the  Porte  wear  the 
fez  at  official  receptions.  As  a  head-dress  for  horsemen, 
when  solar  heat  and  glare  are  not  in  question,  the  fez  is  as 
superior  to  most  kinds  of  hats  and  helmets,  as  it  is  to  the 
desert  Arab's  kerchief  and  rope-twist.  It  seldom  falls  off, 
except  when  the  rider  does  so.  P.  7i- 

{Distorted,  or  deformed,  at  the  zvrist,  or  ankle-joint,  or  at 
both^  The  name  of  an  important  divis.  of  the  Aeniza, 
Table  p.  121  ;  pp.  126. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


343 


FlHR 


[Al]  Furat     .... 
For  page  references  v.  Eu- 
phrates in  Index  ii. 


The  Ku-raish  {q.  v.)  are  also  called  "Al  Fihr"  (p.  ii6); 
but  the  latter  name  particularly  designates  those  of  the  Ku- 
raish  who,  instead  of  being  settled  in  Mecca,  occupied  the 
surrounding  country. 

The  prestige  and  beauty  of  this  river  are  most  impressive. 
Reckoning  the  two-branched  upper  part,  it  is  about  1600  miles 
long,  from  Erzeroum  and  Lake  Van,  to  where,  after  meeting 
the  Tigris,  it  falls  into  the  Persian  Sea.  In  parts  of  its  course, 
inhabited  islands,  not  unstudded  with  ancient  ruined  castles, 
rise  out  of  its  bed.  The  Arabs  think  that  no  other  river 
contains  such  wholesome  water.  In  Al  Yi\ir-B.n,fu-rdt  is  used 
(S.  XXXV.),  not  as  the  name  of  a  river,  but,  epithetically,  to 
distinguish  potable  from  salt  or  brackish  water.^ 


Ga-a'-ji-ba 

Gal-la     . 
P.  160. 


The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Ru-wa-la   Aeniza,  Table   p. 


Gan-ji-fa 


Gan-ta-ra  Khaz-ga 
Ga-sa-ib  . 
[For  ka-sd-ib.'] 


121. 


The  Gallas  constitute  an  important  part  of  the  population 
of  Abyssinia  and  Eastern  Africa.  Above  all  things  they 
are  warriors,  and  they  are  infinitely  divided  into  hostile 
tribal  nations.  Their  cults  are  full  of  interest  to  the  student 
of  religions.  During  many  centuries,  both  Italian  priests  and 
Arabian  teachers  have  lived  among  them,  and  they  now  ex- 
hibit variegated  layers  of  Paganism,  Christianity,  and  Islamism. 
The  WoUo  Gallas  to  the  north  of  Magdala  who  lent  their 
services  to  our  Abyssinian  expedition,  save  in  that  they  lived 
under  a  female  sovereign,  resembled  Sunnite  Arabs.^ 

Cards,  p.  54  f.n.  2.  These  are  probably  of  xA.siatic  origin. 
Strict  Muslim  condemn  them,  because  of  the  Prophet's  pro- 
hibition of  gaming.  But  the  crowd  is  not  so  nice.  From  the 
China  Sea  to  the  Mediterranean  the  "devil's  picture-books" 
make  life's  wheels  move  faster. 

The  name  of  a  spot  on  the  Euphrates,  p.  67  et  f.n.  2. 

[PI.  of  ka-si-ba,  anything  cut,  or  jointed,  e.g.  a  reed.]  The 
plaited  locks  of  the  Bedouin,  which  hang  free  like  whip- 
lashes, p.  29.  [The  Abyssinian  ties  back  the  hair  in  ridges 
and  furrows,  and  walks  out  with  no  other  covering  on  the 
crown  than  a  pat  of  butter  [Psal.  cxxxiii.  2].  The  Arab 
omits  the  butter ;  but  he  divides  his  hair  crossways,  and 
twists  it  into  four  spiral  tresses.] 


^  When  the  Assyrians  first  saw  "the  great  water,"  it  was 
called,  in  the  older  Akkadian  language,  "  Bu-rdt,"  or  "  Pu- 
rdt ;  "  which  they  made  into  Pti-rat-tu.  The  Persians  modi- 
fied this  form  into  "Ufratu,"  whence  the  Gr.  "Euphrates." 

-  Long  before  Islam,  in  the  hereditary  monarchies  of 
South  Arabia,  as  a  rule  the  son  followed  the  father  ;   but 


e.xceptionally,  queens  also  succeeded  to  the  sceptre.  Much 
as  the  Arab  Prophet  did  to  improve  the  status  of  women, 
the  principle  on  which  his  commonwealth  was  founded  ex- 
cluded the  idea  of  female  sovereignty.  Tradition  even 
ascribes  to  him  the  "Saying,"  That  people  never  prospered 
whose  affairs  were  ordered  by  a  woman. 


344 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Ga-sir 
Ga-wa-ji-ba 

Gha-bit    . 

Gha-dhA  . 
Ghai-lAn 
Ghai-tha 
Gha-zal  . 

Gha-za-la 
GhA-z1 


[Al]  Ghaz-u    .        .        .        . 
For  page  references  v.  Raid- 
ing in  Index  ii. 


Ghu-bai-yin    . 

Ghur-ra  . 
Go-mi-ya  . 

Grane 

GURNA       . 

[Correctly  Kiirna?^ 


V.  art.  Ka-SIR. 

The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Ru-wa-la  Aeniza,  Table  p. 

121. 

At  p.  49  ct  f  n.  3,  a  place-name.  At  p.  234  f.n.  4,  the  lower 
part  of  the  camel-saddle. 

A  camel-shrub  of  the  genus  Euphorbia,  p.  36. 

A  wind  of  the  desert,  p.  6^  et  f  n.  i. 

[7?«/«.]     The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar,  p.  122. 

The  x'\rabian  and  Persian  antelope  \Gazelld\.  The  Antilope 
Dorcas  of  naturalist.s,  p.  145  fn.  i. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

One  who  takes  part  in  the  Ghaz-u,  q.  v.  A  small  gold 
coin  is  so  called,  after  Mah-mud  II.  (styled  Gha-zi),  one  of 
the  few  modern  Osmanli  Sultans  (1808- 1839)  who  have  dis- 
played ruler-like  qualities.  Illustration  facing  p.  136. 

\_Aiming  at  a  thing?\  A  plundering  expedition.  The 
^' ba-ran-ta"  oi  \h%  Turkumans.  In  some  Muslim  countries, 
the  epithet  GhA-z1  has  been  specialised,  in  the  sense  of 
fighter  in  the  cause  of  religion ;  but  this  meaning  is  foreign 
to  the  Arabian  Bedouin.  In  El  Islam  the  first  war  adven- 
tures were  expeditions  against  caravans,  e.g.  the  "  RAID  OF 
BiDR,"  A.H.   2. 

\Overreaching  another  in  a  bargain^  The  name  of  a  sub- 
divis. of  the  Fid-a'n  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

A  "  blaze  "  on  a  horse's  forehead,  p.  61  et  f  n.  2. 

\Belonging  to  an  enemy?[  The  name  of  a  strain  of  the 
stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

V.  Ku-WAIT. 

[From  a  root  which  means  connecting,  or  conjoining?^  The 
name  of  the  place,  about  forty  miles  above  Bussorah,  where 
the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  unite  their  waters,  pp.  20,  84 
f.n.  I,  85. 


Ha-ba-shi 


Ha-da-l1  . 


H 


Abyssinian,  p.  107  fn.  3.  [The  Semitic  root  of  Abys- 
sinia, or  Habessinia,  is  said  to  imply  admixture  or  collection. 
A  large  number  of  kidnapped  Abyssinians  of  both  sexes, 
chiefly  Gallas  {q.  v),  pass  through  Jedda,  Suez,  and  Muscat, 
into  all  the  countries  of  Asia,  where,  in  thousands  of  fami- 
lies, they  become  happily  domesticated.  Their  brown  com- 
plexions and  straight  and  regular  Caucasian  features  render 
them  incomparably  more  pleasant  inmates  than  their  woolly- 
pated  and  bituminous  black  congeners.]  The  breed  of 
ponies  called  the  Habashi,  p.  136  f.n.  2. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235 
col.  i. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


345 


Had-ban  . 


Ha-dha-ri 


Hadh-dhAl 
[Al]  Hadhr 


Hadh-ra-maut 
Ha-d1d     . 

Ha-dith  . 

[PL  A-M-dith^ 


Had-ra-ji 

[For  the  mare,  Had-ra-jta?\ 
Ha-f1        .... 

HA-FIR      .... 


The  name  of  one  of  the  Five  primary  divisions  of  the 
stoclv  of  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  v.,  et  p.  298.  [In  a 
simile  in  Im-ra-u  '1  Kais'  poem,  comparing  the  tit-bits  of  camel's 
fat  on  which  a  party  of  gallants  feasted  to  the  unwoven  ends 
of  a  piece  of  Damascus  silk,  the  word  used  for  the  silky  fila- 
ments is  from  the  same  root  as  had-bdn.  As  a  name  for 
a  line  of  horses,  Had-ban  perhaps  has  reference  to  some 
such  feature  as  long  forelocks,  or  long  eyelashes.'] 

[Belonging  to  the  hadJir,  i.e.,  the  demarcated,  and  more  or 
less  cultivated,  country.]  The  opposite  of  Ba-DA-w!.  Pp. 
IS,  16,  52,97,  133,  270. 

The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Aeniza,  pp.  83,  107. 

[Apparently  a  survival  among  the  Arabs  of  the  Roman 
proper  name  Hatra,  Atra,  or  Atrae.]  The  ruins  of  "  Al 
Hadhr,"  in  Al  Jazira,  prepare  a  surprise  for  travellers. 
An  imposing  panorama  of  tolerably  well-preserved  palaces, 
temples,  tombs,  and  reservoirs,  now  presents  itself  on  the 
site  of  a  city  believed  to  have  been  the  capital,  down  to  our 
fourth  century,  of  an  Aramaean  principality  of  the  Palmyra 
type  which  was  tributary  to  the  Parthian  empire.  Hatra 
repulsed  Trajan  (A.D.  116),  and  eighty  -  two  years  later, 
Severus.  The  wild  animals  of  the  desert  now  pass  freely 
over  it.  P.  75,  282  fn.  i. 

\Deatlis  presence :  from  the  severity  of  the  climate.]  The 
southern  coast  district  of  Arabia,  pp.  25,  29,  32,  97  fn.  3. 

Iron.  At  p.  311,  the  iron  shackles  which  the  Arabs  put 
round  their  horses'  fore-pasterns. 

Literally,  tidings,  or  traditional  information.  Then,  specially, 
a  tradition  of  what  the  Prophet  said  or  did,  handed  down  by 
word  of  mouth,  as  distinguished  from  the  written  KuR-AN. 
The  Ha-dIth,  or  "  Saying,"  which  adorns  our  title-page  is 
translated,  p.  158.  Other  references  to  "Sayings,"  pp.  20 
et  f.n.  3,  38,  81  f.n.  i,  93  ^^' f.n.  i,  115  fn.  3,  128  et  f.n.  2,  135 
et  f  n.  2,  162  f.n.  2,  230  f  n.  i. 

The  name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi. 

SJJnshod?^  The  name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI- 
LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

[Diggei:]  The  horny  box  in  which  the  horse's  foot  is  en- 
closed, p.  II.  [In  Saxon,  /lo/ et  Jwfe ;  Dutch,  hoef ;  Norw. 
and  Dan.  liov ;  Gr.  hople.  In  the  Icelandic  language,  which 
of  all  the  existing  Teutonic  dialects  has  retained  the  greatest 
number  of  old  forms  with  the  least  alteration,  the  word  for 
hoof  is  hofr.']  ^ 


^  Those  who  are  bent  on  discovering  a  ' '  language  of 
Eden,"  or  one  primeval  linguistic  stem  of  which  equally  the 
Indo-European   and  the   Semitic  groups   of  languages  are 


offshoots,  may  add  "hofr"  to  their  list  of  illustrations.  A 
stock  example  of  the  same  kind  is  earth  (German,  erde), 
which  is  ard  in  Arabic  ;  and  many  otlier  examples  might  be 


2  X 


346 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Ha-fiz 

Pp.  54  f.n.  2,  1 1 8. 


Hagar     .        . 

Hai  .... 

Hai-dar  {Hydei')  A'LI 


HAI-Fi       . 

Ha-ja-rat  Khaz-ga 
Hajj         .        .        . 


Ha-lab    . 
Ha-lA-w1 

HA-LtjJ      . 

Ha-ma 


Ha-m1d 


\Keeper,  or  preserver^  The  sobriquet,  which  passes  for 
name,  of  the  famous  Persian  poet,  Muhammad  Shamsu  'd  din, 
of  our  14th  century.  In  Persia  and  India,  one  who  has  com- 
mitted Al  Kur-AN  to  viemory  (a  feat  discountenanced  by  the 
stricter  Arabian  Muslim  as  savouring  of  formalism)  receives 
the  title  of  "  Ha-fiz." 

[From  a  Semitic  root  meaning  separation,  as  from  one's 
home  and  country.]  The  Egyptian  girl  (the  Arabian  tradi- 
tionalists write  her  name  Hd-Jar)  of  whom  was  born  Ishmael, 
pp.  100,  115,  116. 

The  name  of  a  small  branch  of  the  Tigris,  in  Lower  I'rak, 
pp.  84  f.n.  I,  85. 

\c.  1702-82.]  The  son  of  a  petty  officer  of  the  native  Hindu 
government  of  Mysore,  who,  through  innate  aptitude  for 
war,  and  the  utmost  energy,  raised  himself  to  sovereignty, 
and,  aided  by  his  son  Tippoo,  contested  with  us  the  mastery 
of  India.     P.  95. 

l^Drawii  fine,  from  work.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al 
Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

A  place-name,  p.  6'j  fn.  2. 

The  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  p.  37.  One  who  performs  the 
Hajj  is  designated  a  HAj,  which  is  softened  into  Haj-JI,  pp. 
176,  301.  [The  Turks,  Persians,  and  Indians  change  Haj-jt 
into  Ha-ji. 

[Mi/k.]  The  Arabs  thus  write  the  place-name  which  we 
write  Aleppo  ;  S7^i?  qjw,  V.  page  references  in  Index  ii. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

[Flashing,  as  lightning  does.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al 
Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

[Hamath  of  the  Bible.]  One  of  the  oldest  cities  of  Syria, 
on  the  Orontes,  about  100  miles  north  of  Damascus,  pp.  211, 
212. 

The  desert,  pp.  19,  65,  Gj,  83,  105.  \_Ham-ma-da  is  the 
name  used  to  designate  the  flintier  segments  of  the  great 
African  Sahara  [v.  art.  Sah-Ra],  the  vastness  of  which,  even 
when  the  view  is  not  carried  east  of  the  Nile,  is  estimated  at 
between  three  and  four  millions  of  square  miles — nearly  equal 
to  all  Europe,  minus  the  Scandinavian  peninsula  and  Iceland.] 


cited.  Of  course,  words  which  are  imitations  of  sounds 
must  be  more  or  less  similar  wherever  they  occur.  It  is  also 
easy  to  trace  how  the  gipsies,  the  crusaders,  the  Moorish  con- 
querors of  Spain,  and  the  Greek  philosophy  have  contribut- 
ed to  the  process  of  word-diffusion.  But  there  is  no  connec- 
tion between  these  facts  and  the  endeavour  to  derive  Aryan 
and  Semitic  from  a  common  source.  Until  the  secret  of  the 
Semitic  root  shall  have  been  discovered,  all  such  attempts 
rest  upon  air.  The  mystery  of  the  Semitic  languages  is  that, 
with  comparatively  few  exceptions,  every  word  either  con- 
sists of,  or  proceeds  out  of,  three  letters  (consonants),  neither 


more  nor  less.  The  Jews  and  the  Arabs  of  ten  centuries  ago 
made  a  good  deal  of  grammar,  but  they  did  not  make  the 
triliteral  root.  A  Sanscrit  root  may  consist  of  a  single 
vowel,  or  of  consonants  and  vowels  in  varied  combinations ; 
but  the  triconsonantal  root  of  Semite  language,  as  historically 
known,  is  as  firmly  moulded  as  if  it  had  been  created  out  of 
moist  earth,  at  the  same  time  with  the  camel.  The  science 
of  comparative  philology  is  still  in  its  infancy  ;  and  a  sure 
means  of  retarding  it  is  to  compare  words  and  lexicons,  when 
we  ought  to  be  comparing  structural  and  grammatical  char- 
acters. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT.  347 

[Al]  Ha-MA-SA         .         .         .  [Literally, _;?r«272^i-j  as  against  an  enemy;  and  figuratively, 

poetic  genius.']  A  collection  of  884  poetical  pieces,  chiefly 
pre-Islamic  or  early  Islamic,  which  was  brought  together, 
about  two  centuries  after  Muhammad,  by  Ha-bib  ibii  Ausi 
't  Ta-i,  commonly  called  Abu  Tam-mam,  himself  a  prac- 
tised lyrist.  As  a  storehouse  of  ancient  legend,  and  mirror 
of  Arabian  life  and  manners,  the  Ha-mA-SA  ranks  with  the 
Mu-a'l-la-kat  {q.  V.)  Verses  by  a  poet  of  Al  Ha-ma-Sa 
translated,  p.  43. 

Ha-MA-WAND   ....  The  name  of  a  small  horde  of  Kurds,  p.  282. 

HAM-DA-Nt       ....  The  name  of  one  of  the  five  primary  divisions  of  the  stock 

[For  mare,  Hain-dd-ni-ya?[  of  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  iv. 

Ham-HA-MA       ....  In  a  translation  from  A'n-tar's  poem,  at  p.  221,  a  whinny- 

ing sound,  softer  than  neighing,  which  horses  make. 

Ham  TI-JA-RA,  ham  ZI-A-RA  .  A  Persian  proverb  :  as  we  should  say,  The  making  of  a  bar- 

gain at  the  cliHvcJi  door,  p.  116. 

Ha-NIF      .....  The  importance  of  this  word  to  students  of  Arabian  topics 

P.  loi.  depends  on  the  following  facts.     Professor  Max  Muller  says 

of  El  Is-lam  that  it  "  springs,  as  far  as  its  most  vital  doctrines 
are  concerned,  from  the  ancient  fountain-head  of  the  religion 
of  Abraham,  the  worshipper  and  friend  of  the  one  true  God."  ^ 
Now,  Al  Kur-an  six  times  styles  Abraham  a  "  Ha-nif."  In 
five  other  passages  the  same  epithet  is  applied  to  the  Patriarch's 
religious  attitude,  in  turning  from  idols  to  the  "  Allahu  'r 
RAHMANU  'r  RA-HIM  "  of  Islamism.  And  it  is  needless  to 
observe  that  the  Arab  Prophet,  in  calling  Abraham  a  "  Ha- 
nif,"  called  himself  one.  Out  of  all  this,  a  plentiful  crop  of 
questions  issues.  Ha-nif,  we  know,  was  an  established  word 
in  Semitic  language  long  before  Muhammad.  It  occurs  in 
the  Talmud,  with  the  meaning  of  "  hypocrite."  Clearly,  Mu- 
hammad cannot  have  used  it  in  that  sense.  But,  first,  did  he 
"  bring  it  in  "  as  a  weird  expression,  borrowed  from  a  foreign 
source ;  or  was  it  current  among  the  Arabs,  before  his  period, 
with  a  special  religious  application  ?  As  far  as  this  point  is 
concerned,  the  best  authorities  are  now  agreed  that  the 
Arabian  Ha-nifs  are  historical ;  that  is,  that  before  Muham- 
mad, and  especially  towards  his  era,  there  lived,  in  Medina 
and  elsewhere,  Arabs  who,  because  of  their  religious  earnest- 
ness and  their  rejection  of  polytheism,  were  called  by  others, 
if  they  did  not  call  themselves,  "  Ha-nifs."  But  this  does  not 
inform  us  who  these  "private  judgment"  people  were  ;  or  in 
how  far  the  representation  is  justifiable,  that  a  traditional 
"faith  of  Abraham"  had  been  preserved  by  them  during  the 
pagan  ages.  Without  professing  to  solve  these  difificulties,  we 
are  tempted  to  place  them  alongside  of  a  familiar  passage  of 
history.     It  is  not  unusual  for  Protestant  writers  to  describe 

'  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  p.  103. 


348 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


Ha-NIF — continued. 


Ha-ra-ka        .... 

Ha-ram 

For  the  European  form, 
"harem,"  v.  pp.  17  f.n.  i, 
47  f.n.  2,  103  fn.  I.  For 
"Ha-ram"  in  the  sense 
of  holy,  V.  p.  116  :  also  a 
slightly  different  form  of 
the  same  epithet,  in  art. 
Mas  -  jiDU  'l  ha  -  ram, 
infra. 


the  Mystics  of  Germany  and  Holland  as  precursors  of  the 
Reformation.  Perhaps  they  were  so  ;  but  not  in  the  sense 
that  they  saw  any  glimmering  of  the  light  which  afterwards 
dawned  on  Luther.  And  so  in  regard  to  the  Ha-nifs.  How- 
ever helpful  some  of  them  may  have  been  to  Muhammad 
when  his  own  mental  life  was  at  its  crisis,  and  however  con- 
siderably the  body  of  the  Ha-nifs  {"Al Hu-na-fd  ")  may  in  the 
course  of  time  have  given  their  adherence  to  his  formulated 
system,  established  facts  are  opposed  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  source  of  Islam  was  among  them.  The  European  reader 
must  not  imagine  that  the  Hu-na-fa  composed  a  regular 
"  Sect."  Many  divergent  types  both  of  thought  and  action 
may  be  traced  among  them.  For  example,  the  Arabian 
anchoret,  or  "ra-hib,"  to  whom  a  slight  reference  occurred 
in  art.  Der,  stipra,  if  he  was  not  a  "  Ha-nif,"  was  at  least 
tinctured  with  Hanifite  ideas.  Muhammad  himself,  accord- 
ing to  unanimous  tradition,  as  part  of  the  ordeal  through 
which  he  passed  before  he  assumed  his  mission,  was  wont 
to  spend  the  truce  month,  Ra-jab,  in  solitary  devotional 
meditation  (ta-Jian-mitJi)  ^  in  the  clefts  of  Mount  Har-ra  over 
against  Mecca.  Before  his  time,  many  of  the  Hu-na-fa  had 
even  carried  asceticism  far  enough  to  lead  the  populace  to 
associate  them  with  those  Christian  monks  ^  who  exalted 
celibacy  from  a  mere  feature  of  the  hermit  life  to  the  rank 
of  a  religious  virtue  (Matt.  xix.   12  ;    i   Cor.  vii.) 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235, 
col.  i. 

This  word  is  much  used  to  denote  the  precincts  which, 
under  the  polygamous  system,  are  in  the  excbisive  occupancy 
of  the  female  division  of  the  hojiseJiold.  In  Persia  the  cor- 
responding term  is  san-d-na ;  and  in  Europe,  seraglio.  By 
metonymy,  the  same  words  mean  the  inmates  of  those  pre- 
cincts. The  root-idea  in  Iirm  is,  prohibited ;  but  it  yields 
many  other  meanings,  ranging  between  that  of  sacred, 
inviolable,  holy,  and  that  of  a  tiling  to  be  abstained  from,  as 
is,  e.g.,  swine's  flesh  under  Judaism  and  Islamism.  Thus 
does  ha-ram  contain  two  seemingly  divergent  ideas — that  of 
holy,  and  that  of  tabooed  (popularly,  "abominable"  v.  Isaiah 


1  There  is  good  old  Arabic  authority  to  support  the  view 
that  ha-ntf  and  ta-lian-mith  claim  a  common  root.  Some 
Eastern  scholars  derive  ha-nif  iroxa  ha-na-fa,  which  is  purely 
Arabic,  and  means  to  incline,  or  deviate.  The  proper  name 
Ha-ni-fa  existed  in  pagan  Arabia.  A  nation  so  called  held, 
we  know,  the  mountainous  heart  of  Najd,  till  a  soldier  of 
Islam  broke  them  in  a  sanguinary  battle.  The  name  of  the 
same  people  still  lives  in  "Wa-di  Ha-ni-fa,"  one  of  the 
winding  passes  which  lead  to  the  Wahabite  capital.  But 
these  facts  do  not  affect  the  explanation  that  the  Ha-nifs  of 
Arabia  took  their  appellation  from  ta-han-mtth,  which 
occurs  in  the  Bible  in  the  sense  of  Prayers. 


-  The  friar,  or  celibate  ecclesiastic,  of  pre-Reformation 
times,  is  termed  in  Al  ICur-an  a  "rd-hib."  The  Arab 
Prophet  perceived  only  the  worst  features  of  monachism. 
He  held  strongly,  like  Bacon  after  him,  that  "wife  and 
children  are  a  discipline  in  humanity  ;  bachelors  are  morose 
and  austere. "  It  is  unnecessary  to  quote  the  severe  animad- 
versions on  the  state  of  being  a  Ra-hib,  and  on  the  Ra-hibs 
themselves,  which  Al  Kur-an  contains,  as  in  Sii-ras  ix.  etWii. 
"  Ra-hib  "  is  pure  Arabic,  and  is  now  confined  to  literature. 
A  Christian  "priest,"  or  cleric  of  ordinary  rank,  is  called  by 
the  modern  Arabs  a  kass,  or  kis-sh,  a  Syriac  word  signifying 
Elder. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


349 


Ha-RAM — continued. 


Harb 

Ha-RIK     . 
HA-RiSH    . 


Ixv.  4)  ;  but  the  explanation  is  simple.  The  word  trans- 
lated "  unclean  "  of  the  Levitical  prohibition  here,  as  else- 
where, produces  a  confusion  of  ideas.  In  the  pig's  case,  for 
example,  it  is  generally  assumed  that  his  disgusting  habits 
caused  the  eating  of  him  to  be  interdicted  by  primitive  law- 
givers. It  appears  more  probable  that  the  prohibition  in 
question  points  to  the  time  when  numerous  animals  were 
exclusively  appropriated  to  the  gods.  Interesting  facts  bear- 
ing on  this  subject  are  to  be  observed  in  El  I'rak.  At 
Mosul,  where  we  are  at  this  moment  writing,  the  Osmanli 
cavalry  soldiers  allow  a  pet  pig  to  run  about  their  barrack- 
yard,  under  the  superstition  that  evil  spirits  will  enter  it, 
and  not  the  horses.^  Again,  the  name  for  whooping-cough 
in  Arabic  is  khi-nai-zi-ra,  sc.  pigs  cougJi ;  for  which  dis- 
temper water  from  a  pig's  drinking-trough  is  held  to  be  a 
sound  prescription.  An  English  resident  of  Baghdad  keeps  a 
pig-stye  in  his  garden.  On  our  asking  him  whether  his  Muslim 
neighbours  did  not  object  to  his  doing  so,  his  answer  was, 
that,  on  the  contrary,  he  found  it  difficult  to  exclude  those 
of  them  who  desired  to  procure  cupfuls  of  the  water  for 
patients  in  their  harems  !  And  lastly,  in  the  country  of  the 
Tigris,  not  only  Shi-ites,  but  even  Sun-nis  of  the  less  educated 
classes,  adorn  the  necks  of  their  mares  with  amulets  made 
of  boars'  tushes.  Such  facts  as  these  deserve  to  be  considered 
in  connection  with  Muhammad's  prohibition  of  swine's  flesh. 
In  none  of  the  passages  of  Al  Kur-AN  which  lay  down 
the  law  on  this  point  is  any  reason  given.  The  Prophet, 
in  certain  of  his  "  Sayings,"  affixed  to  the  pig  the  word 
which  is  used  to  denote  the  "  impurity  "  of  the  dog.  But  we 
know  that  the  dog  also  was  treated  as  an  object  of  worship 
by  many  nations  of  antiquity.  A  Muslim  merchant  from 
Egypt  lately  described  to  us  with  horror,  and,  it  may  be 
hoped,  not  without  exaggeration,  how  the  ancestral  canine 
guards  of  Cairo  are  now  being  done  to  death  by  "  scientific" 
methods. 

The  name  of  a  great  confederation  of  the  Bedouin,  whose 
di-ras  extend  from  about  Medina  eastward,  pp.  39  fn.  i,  59 
fn.  2,  127,  217  fn.  I. 

The  name  of  a  large  oasis,  on  the  borders  of  the  great 
southern  desert  of  Najd,  p.  32  fn.  i. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  iii. 


'  A  familiar  Gospel  story  has  for  its  basis  the  special  eligi- 
bility of  the  pig  to  form  the  receptacle  of  devils.  Among 
the  many  kind  things  which  the  Sun-ni  says  of  the  Shi-i'  in 
El  I'rak  is,  that  when  they  die  they  are  changed  into  pigs, 
and  sent  back  to  their  old  haunts.  To  illustrate  the  value 
of  testimony  in  such  matters,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  in 
Baghdad,  in  the  present  year  of  grace,  any  one  who  is  not 


an  official  could,  we  feel  assured,  find  witnesses  who,  without 
having  a  set  purpose  to  deceive,  should  make  affirmation 
that,  to  the  certain  knowledge  of  themselves  or  others,  well- 
known  Shi-ite  townsmen  have  shortly  after  their  death  and 
burial  been  seen  reposing  in  porcine  form  in  their  recently 
vacated  summer-houses,  or  perhaps  grubbing  for  roots  in 
the  garden  ! 


350 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Ha-r1sh — continued. 


Har-ma   . 
Har-ran 


Ha-runu  'r  ra-shid 


[Al]  Ha-sa 
[PL  Ak-sdr[ 


Ha-san 


Ha-san  bin  badr 

HA-SHiSH 


Has-san  . 
Ha-tim    . 

Haub 


Hau-daj  . 


[A  camel-master  of  Mosul  says  that  ha-rish  means  having  the 
lips  excoriated.  The  camel's  gullet  can  pass  down  thorns 
from  which  the  horny  sole  of  the  same  animal  flinches.  But 
both  in  the  mare  and  the  camel  the  upper  lip  is  apt  to  be 
wounded  in  cropping  the  acacias  of  the  desert.] 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  iii. 

The  "  Haran  "  of  Genesis  ;  and  see  Ezek.  xxvii.  23.  P.  1 1 1 
et  fn.  I.  [In  Assyro-Babylonian,  Har-ran  means  road,  and 
the  city  of  Har-ran  is  often  mentioned  in  the  cuneiform 
literature.] 

Ha-run,  the  Kuranic  transcription  of  Aaron ;  ra-shid,  v.  in 
this  Index.  The  "  Haroun  Alraschid,"  5th  Abbaside  Caliph 
of  Baghdad  (last  quarter  of  8th  Christian  century),  whose 
strolls  incognito  through  his  capital  are  immortalised  in  the 
Arabian  Nights.     P.  98. 

The  well-known  Arabian  province  on  the  Persian  Gulf, 
pp.  29,  30  et  f.n.  2,  31,  48,  99  f.n.  4,  293,  294.  [The  name  de- 
notes, Ground  on  zvhich  zvater  collects ;  or,  acciinmlated  sand 
beneath  which  is  hard  ground,  so  that  when  the  sand  is  scraped 
away,  tlie  water  that  has  rained  on  it  is  found.'[ 

{Beautiful^  An  exceedingly  common  proper  name  among 
the  Arabs.  A'li's  eldest  son,  and  nominal  successor  in  the 
Caliphate,  bore  it. 

The  Arab  horse-dealer,  p.  309. 

Fodder.  The  same  word  yields  a  name  (in  Baghdad,  "ha- 
shi-sha ")  for  an  intoxicant  obtained  from  the  hemp-plant, 
the  Indian  preparations  of  which  are  bhang,  ganja,  and  cha- 
ras.     P.  82  f.n.  i.     Et  v.  art.  Alamut,  supra. 

A  horse-dealer  [lit.,  one  zvho  is  constantly  occupied  zvith  the 
hisdn,  or  horse],  p.  123  fn.  i. 

A  name  or  title  in  which  is  the  idea  ol  judging.  In  Arabia 
the  fountain  of  power  is  still  that  of  judgment,  or  justice. 
Accordingly,  Hatim  is  the  equivalent  of  Amir,  or  Shekh.  V. 
p.  62  f.n.  2,  a  reference  to  the  famous  Arabian  Hatim. 

Many  words,  especially  those  of  the  chiding  category,  have 
either  been  made  by  the  Arab  camel-drivers,  or  borrowed 
from  the  guttural  speech  of  their  cattle  ;  and  one  such  is 
liaub.  A  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN  is  also  thus 
designated,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

It  forms  the  ambition  of  every  desert  lady,  when  she 
mounts  her  camel,  to  have  the  rahl,  or  saddle,  fitted  with 
the  exceedingly  picturesque  sedan,  which  they  call  a  hau- 
daj,  p.  321.  Doughty  saw  the  daughters  of  the  Harb  nation 
(vol.  ii.  p.  304  of  his  Travels)  seated  in  "  crated  frames, 
trapped  with  the  wavering  tongues  of  coloured  cloths,  and 
long  lappets  of  camel  leather."  The  hau-daj  depicted  in  our 
volume  is  from  a  sketch  by  Layard.  The  same  distinguished 
traveller  and  writer  thus  describes  the  structure  : — 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


351 


Hau-DAJ — contiiuied. 


"  A  light  framework,  varying  from  sixteen  to  twenty  feet  in  length, 
stretches  across  the  hump  of  the  camel.  It  is  brought  to  a  point  at 
each  end,  and  the  outer  rods  are  joined  by  distended  parchments ; 
two  pouches  of  gigantic  pelicans  seem  to  spring  from  the  sides  of 
the  animal.  In  the  centre,  and  over  the  hump,  rises  a  small 
pavilion,  under  which  is  seated  a  lady.  The  whole  machine,  as 
well  as  the  neck  and  body  of  the  camel,  is  ornamented  with  tassels 
and  fringes  of  worsted  of  every  hue,  and  with  strings  of  glass  beads 
and  shells.  It  sways  from  side  to  side  as  the  beast  labours  under 
the  unwieldy  burthen  ;  looking,  as  it  appears  above  the  horizon,  like 
some  stupendous  butterfly  skimming  slowly  over  the  plain."  ^ 


HaUR  or  HOR 
[Al]  Hau-ran 

Pp.  294, 295. 


[Al]  Ha-wi-ja 
Ha-yil     . 


HiB-LAN 


Beyond  the  limits  of  the  desert,  the  hau-daj  is  called  a 
maJi-mil,  lit.  vehicle.  The  "  Mah-mil "  which  accompanies 
the  annual  pilgrim  caravan  from  Cairo  to  Mecca  is  an  ex- 
ample. Like  a  royal  carriage  in  a  procession,  the  Egyptian 
Mah-mil  represents  the  Sultan  and  the  Viceroy  of  Egypt. 
In  thirty-seven  days  of  marching,  it  serves  as  the  venerated 
guide  of  the  swollen  concourse  :  v.  Lane's  Modern  Egyptians, 
ch.  xxiv. 

A  marsh  ;  and  especially  a  space  which,  after  having  been 
under  water,  has  dried  up  through  evaporation,  p.  82. 

The  remarkable  district  east  of  the  Jordan,  south  and  south- 
east of  Damascus,  which  is  now  much  identified  with  the 
Druses.  The  Hauran  formed  a  part  of  the  ancient  kingdom 
of  Bashan.  It  was  here  that  "the  Midianites  and  the  Amale- 
kites  and  all  the  children  of  the  east  lay  along  in  the  valley 
like  grasshoppers  for  multitude  ;  and  their  camels  were  with- 
out number,  as  the  sand  by  the  sea-side  for  multitude" 
(Judges  vii.  12).  In  our  day  this  description  is  applicable  to 
the  Aeniza,  when  they  swarm  into  the  Hauran  in  early 
summer.  According  to  Arab  tradition,  it  was  here  that  Job 
increased  in  sheep  and  camels,  oxen  and  she-asses.  The 
name  Hauran  occurs  in  Ezek.  xlvii.  16-18.  If  the  standing 
interpretation  of  it  by  cave-land  be  uncertain,  nothing  better 
has  been  offered.  Porter's  Five  Years  in  Damascits  is  the 
book  most  quoted  by  European  travellers  in  Al  Hauran  who 
pass  our  way.  But  the  accounts  therein  given  are  very  un- 
satisfactory from  the  archaeological  point  of  view  ;  and  the 
cities  described  as  "  pre-Mosaic "  are  mostly  of  the  Roman 
period. 

A  term  of  Arabian  topography,  pp.  82,  S3,  280,  281,  283. 

\Situated  betzueen,  i.e.  between  AjA  and  Sal-MA.]  The 
principal  settlement  in  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  pp.  37-48  passim, 
58,  72,  122,  132,  146,  251,  296. 

{Ireful^  The  name  of  a  great  horde  of  the  Aeniza,  Table 
p.  121. 


'   op.  cii.  in  Catalog.  No.  30,  vol.  i.  ch.  iv. 


352 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


Hid 


Hi-jab 
[Al]  Hi-jaz 


HiL-LA 

HlM-RI 

Him-rIn  [Red] 

HiM-YAR,     HiMYARITES,     HO- 
ME RITES. 

[Al]  Hin-na  .        .        .        . 


HiR-FA 
Hl-SAN 


Hl-SAN   KA-SIR 

Hit  . 

[Al]  Hi-taim  . 
Hi-zam     . 


[  V.  in  art.  Dij-LA,  siipra?^  The  river  of  Lower  I'rak  which 
is  called  the  Hid,  after  forming  many  intricate  ramifications 
(navigable  only  for  the  tar-ra-da,  or  canoe),  loses  itself,  as  is 
believed,  in  a  sheet  of  water  marked  on  maps  as  Ha-ivi-ja. 
Pp.  84  f.n.  I,  85. 

A  charm  or  amulet,  p.  136  f.n.  i. 

The  mountain-land  which  separates  the  lowlands  on  the 
Red  Sea  coast  from  the  upland  plain  of  the  Arab  peninsula, 
pp.  26,  28,  29,  30,  34,  47  fn.  2,  49,  106,  116,  117,  128. 

\A  company  alightiiig?^  The  name  of  a  small  town  on  the 
Euphrates,  pp.  100,  300. 

A  natural  grass  of  the  Arabian  steppe-land,  p.  73. 

Name  of  a  range  of  mountains,  pp.  84  fn.  i,  282  et  fn.  i. 

The  name  of  a  people  whose  hegemony  followed  on  that  of 
the  old  Sabsean  kings  of  Yemen,  pp.  27,  28. 

The  name  of  the  plant  which  is  incorrectly  rendered,  in  the 
authorised  version  of  Cant.  i.  14  et  iv.  13,  "camphire."  Botan- 
ists name  it  Laivsonia  alba;  and  the  Indians,  menh-dt.  Many 
oriental  nations  prize  the  hinna  for  its  vulnerary  and  beauti- 
fying properties.  The  Persians,  and  the  Shi-ite  Indians, 
make  its  leaves  into  a  paste,  with  which  they  impart  an 
orange-red  colour  to  the  beard,  the  palms,  the  soles,  the 
finger-tips,  and  other  parts.  We  know  from  Im-ra-u  '1  Kais' 
poem  that  this  practice  prevailed  among  the  pagan  Arabs  : 
V.  line  II  in  the  translated  passage  at  p.  143.  Some  tradi- 
tions are  held  to  show  that  the  Prophet  habitually  stained  his 
beard  in  this  manner.  From  other  traditions  it  is  inferred 
that  he  did  so  only  once. 

A  name  signifying  active,  which  the  Bedouin  give  to  their 
daughters,  p.  51. 

The  Horse.  The  root-idea  in  Jii-san  is  inaccessibility. 
That  is,  the  horse's  back  is  a  tower  of  strength,  or  fortress. 
When  an  Arab,  in  looking  over  a  horse,  exclaims,  Hi-sdn!  he 
would  say  that  he  is  "  a  Jiorse,  and  no  mistake"  or  as  he  some- 
times expresses  himself,  "two  horses."  Pp.  123  fn.  i;  232, 
238  f.n.  2. 

A  Galloway  or  pony,  p.  258. 

A  small  town  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Euphrates,  about 
100  miles  W.N.W.  of  Baghdad,  pp.  73,  75,  78  f  n.  3,  84. 

Certain  inferior  hordes  of  the  Arabian  peninsula,  p.  59 
f.n.  2. 

A  man's  girdle,  p.  292  ;  a  beast's  girth,  and  the  like.  The 
part  of  the  horse  round  wJiich  the  girtJi  passes  is  mah-zim ; 
for  which  they  commonly  say  Jii-zdm.  Arab  horsemen 
understand  the  importance  of  depth  and  capacity  in  this 
region.  So  long  ago  as  our  sixth  century,  a  desert  "  makar  " 
described  his  courser  as  large-limbed,  full-flanked,  and  great 
in  the  girthing-place. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


353 


Hu-bA-rA 

[Al]  Hu-DHAir. 
Hu-dCid   . 


HUF-HUF  , 


HUJ-JA 


HULAGU    . 

Pp.  30  f.n.  I,  277. 


HU-MAT     . 

HUR-TU-MAN 
HU-SAIN    . 


HU-TA 

Hu-wai-tAt 


An  Arabian  bustard,  the  affinities  of  which  are  with  the 
cranes  in  one  direction  and  the  plovers  in  another,  p.  152. 

A  shepherd  nation  of  Central  Arabia,  p.  59  f  n.  2. 

An  Arab  scholar  says  that  hu-di'id  means  pre-eminent. 
As  a  term  of  horse-breeding  (pp.  237,  272  f.n.  2),  it  practically 
expresses  the  same  idea  as  a-sU,  sa-liiJi  (genuine),  madh-Mit 
(firm),  and  many  other  words. 

The  name  of  the  chief  settlement  in  Al  Ha-SA,  pp.  30,  31. 
[The  etymological  meaning  perhaps  is,  encompassed,  as  with 
palms.] 

{Convincing  evidence.']  A  written  pedigree  of  a  horse  is 
called  by  the  Arabs  a  "huj-ja";  of  which  z^.  an  illustration, 
with  remarks,  pp.  136  et  137. 

[Marco  Polo  relates  how  "Alau"  (Hulagu)  gave  up  to  fire 
and  slaughter  "  Baudas  "  (Baghdad  with  the  gutturals  slurred, 
Mongol-fashion),  "  the  great  city,  which  used  to  be  the  seat 
of  the  Calif  of  all  the  Saracens  in  the  world,  just  as  Rome  is 
the  seat  of  the  Pope  of  all  the  Christians."  This  merciless 
pillager  of  Western  Asia  is  now  all  but  forgotten  in  the  Tigris 
valley,  which  in  the  13th  century  he  overspread  with  terror.] 

{^Protectoi^s.l  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table 
p.  235  col.  i. 

A  kind  of  pulse,  p.  82  f.n.  i. 

\_The  little  Ha-san,  or  younger  brother  of  Ha-san.]  A'li's 
second  son  ;  he  who,  when  marching  to  Ku-fa,  to  head  a 
revolt  against  the  Caliph  Yazid's  government,  was  intercepted 
by  a  force  of  horsemen,  and  with  all  his  followers  butchered, 
on  the  plain  of  Kar-ba-lA,  q.  v.  infra.     P.  162  fn.  2. 

A  town  in  Najd,  p.  32  fn.  i. 

These  people  are  met  with  by  travellers  in  the  region  of  the 
Dead  Sea.  They  also  occupy  parts  of  Egypt.  If  they  can 
claim  a  headquarters,  perhaps  it  is  in  the  cultivated  lands 
of  the  very  ancient  oasis  which  was  known  to  the  Greek 
traders  as  Petra.     P.  59  f.n.  2. 


I'-bA-dAt  . 
IB-IL 

Ibn   . 


The  name  of  an  important  subdivis.  of  the  Sba'  Aeniza, 
Table  p.   121. 

Camels  ;  a  collective  noun ;  synonyms,  bd-tr,  pi.  a-bd-i'r ; 
ri-kab,  q.  v.  infra;  and  other  words.     P.  57  f.n.  5. 

[Building,  or  raising  7ip,  sc.  by  the  father  or  ancestor.]  A 
son  ;  son's  son ;  and  remoter  descendants.  The  fem.  forms 
are  ib-na,  ab-na,  et  bint,  a  daughter.  In  many  shapes  the 
word  is  familiar  in  Europe  :  e.g.,  Ben,  as  Benjamin,  prob.  son 
of  right  Iiand ;  Bin,  ot  Ibn,  3.s  Ibnu  'r  Ra-shid  ;  and  Ba-nu, 
or  Be-ni,  as  B.  Is-ra-il.  Pp.  34  f  n.  i,  107  f.n  3. 
2  Y 


354 


GLOSSARIAL  I  AW  EX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


IBNU   A-Wt 

Ibnu  'l  wa-tau 
Ib-rA-h!m 

Shekh 

I'dhar 


If-ri-ja 
Ih-sa-na 
Ih-si-n1 
Ij-lAl 

Ij-LAS 


[Al]  I-khai-dhar 
Ikh-ri-sa 

I'k-rish    . 

I-mAm 

Pp.  39  f.n.  2,  25: 


[Soji  of  a  howler.']     The  jackal,  p.  34  f.n.  i. 

As  an  illustration  of  Bedouin  names,  p.  107  f.n.  3. 

Abraham,  pp.  100  f.n.  i,  loi.  V.  Abraham  in  Index  ii. 

The  late,  Arab  horse-dealer,  of  Calcutta,  p.  307. 

The  part  of  the  Arab  riding-halter  which  lies  upon  the 
animal's  cheek.     Illustration  on  p.  140. 

The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

A  section  of  the  Wald  A'li  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

Ut  supra. 

The  name  of  one  of  the  great  confederations  into  which 
the  Aeniza  nation  is  divided,  Table  p.  121. 

A  generic  name  for  pastures,  p.  105. 

[Du7/ii>.']  The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Fid-a'n  Aeniza, 
Table  p.  121,  122  ei  f.n.  5. 

[Pten^encj/.]    The  name  of  a  grass,  p.  82  f.n.  2. 

The  simplest  meaning  of  this  word  is,  a  model.  Al  Kur-an 
six  times  uses  it.  In  S.  ii.  it  is  said  of  Abraham,  Truly  I  am 
making  thee  an  I-mamfor  men.  In  two  texts,  the  same  word 
denotes  an  inanimate  tablet.  Accordingly,  the  title  I-mam,  as 
borne  by  a  Muslim  ruler,  signifies  that  he  is,  before  all  things, 
an  exemplar,  as  well  as  an  establisher,  of  the  Faith.  Among 
the  developments  of  this  theory  there  are  two  which  have  im- 
portant political  bearings — viz.,  the  people  must  determine 
whether  the  head  of  the  State  is  "orthodox  ";i  and  a  prin- 
cipality which  is  thus  compacted  like  a  sect  or  a  congregation, 
the  more  it  expands,  grows  the  weaker  through  dissensions. 
Not  to  dwell  on  these  aspects,  the  "  I-mam"  is  he  who,  when 
two  or  three  of  the  Muslim  pray  together,  posts  himself  in 
front  of  the  others.  Leaders  of  public  devotion  ("  I-mams"), 
as  well  as  lecturers,  or  preachers  ("  kha-tibs  "),  may  be  appoint- 
ed by  authority — e.g.,  by  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  ;  but  such 
officials  do  not  perform  religious  acts  on  behalf  of  others. 
The  one  great  sacrifice  of  the  Muslim  is  that  in  which  a 
camel,  a  cow,  a  sheep,  or  a  goat  is  annually  presented,  in  com- 
memoration of  Abraham's  willingness  to  offer  up  his  son.  The 
leading  idea  in  this  ceremony  is  that  of  a  thank-offering,  and 
a  benevolence  to  the  poor."  The  Arabs  do  not  read  into  it  any 
mystical  meaning  ;  as  an  act  of  religion  it  partakes  of  the 
general  simplicity  of  desert  life.  This  is  noticed  here  because 
confusion  follows  when  terms  like  I-mdm  and  Muj-ta-hid 
are  rendered,  as  they  very  often  are,  by  Priest  and  High 
Priest.     No   doubt   the    Persian   Muj-ta-hids?   the   Turkish 


^  A  "Saying"  of  the  Prophet  is,  Obey  your  rulers  up  to 
the  point  (or  the  while)  that  they  obey  Allah. 

^  The  same  remark  applies  to  the  a'-ki-ka,  or  slaughtered 
kid,  with  which  the  Muslim,  following  the  example  of  the  Pro- 
phet's wife  Kha-di-ja,  do  honour  to  every  birtli  in  the  family. 
For  a  boy  two  kids,  and  for  a  girl  one,  are  thus  devoted. 


2  Under  the  present  dynasty  of  Persia,  the  Mujtahids,  or 
theological  doctors  of  the  highest  degree  of  learning,  have 
more  and  more  felt  the  weight  of  the  secular  government. 
But  their  position  is  still  that  of  spiritual  Pashas  of  the  most 
formidable  type  ;  and  their  interference  in  public  affairs  is,  on 
the  whole,  a  great  source  of  mischief. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


355 


I-MAM — contimied. 


I'-mA-rAt 

[PI.  of  I'-md-f^d.] 

I  MRU   'L   KAIS  .  . 

[For  Im-ra-u  'l  Kais.] 

Im-si-ka  .... 
Im-tair  .... 
I'N  (eeu)  .... 
In  shA  Allah 

iN-ZI-Hi     .... 


[Al]  1'rAk 


I'-sA , 


I'-sA  di//  Kir-tAs 


I'SHB 


U'-la-mA,  or  Knowers  (i.e.,  of  theology),  and  all  the  Asiatic 
army  of  dervishes,  fa  -  kirs,  and  muUas,  represent  orders 
which  may  be  called  "  religious."  It  is  equally  certain 
that  these  privileged  persons  tremendously  impress  the  un- 
instructed  masses.  People  who  consider  "  holiness "  to  be 
associated  with  special  kinds  of  learning  naturally  tend  to 
exalt  their  "  mullas  "  over  the  rest  of  mankind.  But  if  either 
"  Levitical "  or  "  apostolic  "  succession,  or  even  the  simplest 
process  of  "  ordination,"  essentially  enter  into  the  idea  of 
"clericalism,"  then  is  Islamism  as  I'emarkable  among  the 
higher  religions  for  the  non-development  of  this  thought  as 
for  the  absence  of  ritual  in  its  worship.  Beyond  the  One 
God's  existence,  and  His  gift  of  a  Prophet  and  a  Kur-an, 
there  is  nothing  very  abstruse  in  the  Arabian  theology. 
Worship  is  the  affair  of  the  individual.  With  "sacramental" 
ideas  wholly  absent,  there  is  no  room  for  "  priestly  "  services. 
The  fulfiller  of  the  patriarchal  law  of  circumcision  is  merely 
the  village  barber.  Any  one  who  can  read  or  recite  a  few 
sentences  of  Al  Kur-an  is  competent  to  confirm  the  mutual 
contract  between  the  bride  and  the  bridegroom. 

[Root-ideas,  _;?;'w^/^'  holding  a  land,  being  populous,  and  the 
like.]  (i)  A  ^z/iTi-z-Bedouin  people  of  El  I'rak,  p.  84  fn.  i. 
(2)  A  primary  subdivis.  of  the  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

[Either  man  {vir)  of  the  tribe  of  Kais,  or  man,  in  the  sense 
of  devotee,  of  the  tribe's  tutelary  deity,  Kais?\  Translations 
from  his  poem,  pp.  49,  143.  Other  references,  pp.  50,  56,  97, 
136,  144,  14s,  243  fn  2,  260. 

[Root-idea,  seizing?}^  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Sba' 
Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

[From  viatr,  rain.]  The  name  of  an  important  Bedouin 
nation  of  Central  Arabia,  pp.  10,  58,  59  f.n.  2. 

[PI.  of  an  adjective  meaning  large-eyed,  from  din,  the  ej'e.] 
Bovine  antelope,  p.  145  fn.  i. 

A  favourite  expression  of  the  Arabs,  and  of  all  the  Muslim, 
p.  38  f.n.  3. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  KhaM-SA,  pp.  235  col.  v.  et 
298.  [One  who  lives  near  us  understands  from  the  name 
In-si-hi  that  the  "  Had-ba  "  mare  from  which  this  strain  pro- 
ceeded belonged  to  a  Badawi  who  had  quitted  his  ozvn  people, 
and  become  KA-SIR  {q.  v.)  among  strangers.] 

The  well-known  province  on  the  Tigris,  pp.  23,  65,  6j,  78- 
S6,  119,  120,  148,  203,  210,  230,  234,  271,  277-285,  298,  312, 
315- 

The  Arabs  thus  write  "  yesiis"  pp.  100  f n.  i,  106  et  fn.  i, 
228  fn.  1. 

The  late  "  Esau  bin  Curtas,"  Arab  horse-dealer  of  Bussorah, 
Calcutta,  and  Bombay,  pp.  228,  248  f  n.  i,  270,  307,  308. 

Spring  grasses,  p.  82  fn.  i. 


3S6 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX   AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


[Al]  I'shr 
[Al]  Is-lam 


IS-MA-f'L 

Is-ra-Il 

Ithl  or  Ethel  [corr&cily  A  thl) 
IZ-MAIL 


The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235 
col.  i. 

[The  Semitic  root  sliii'^  {v.  p.  227  f.n.  5)  yields,  among 
other  forms,  the  form  is-ldm,  and  is-lAm  means  surrender, 
sciL,  in  its  religious  application,  surrender  to  the  Almighty :  v. 
as  to  the  distinction  between  this  "  surrender  "  and  "  fatalism," 
p.  130  et  i.x\.  2.]  For  references  to  the  "  Dinu  '1  Is-lam,"  or 
monotheistic  faith  of  Arabia,  v.  Preface,  et  pp.  4  f.n.  i,  10 1, 
108,  160  et  f.n.  I,  161,  163  f.n.  3,  277,  281  et  f.n.  2. 

\El  heard.']  The  Arabian  form  of  "  Ishmael,"  q.  v.  in 
Index  ii. 

[El  fought  or  strove.']     "  Israel,"  q.  v.  in  Index  ii. 

A  tree  of  the  Tar-fd,  or  Tamarisk  order,  p.  269. 

[Diminutive  oi  zi-mdl,  the  ass.]  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of 
the  Sham-mar,  p.  122. 


Ja-bal 


Ja-bal  Sham-mar 
Ja-bal  Sha-ra 


Ja-bal  TtjR 


A  mountain,  pp.  39,  178.  [The  cosmogony  given  in  Al 
Kur-An  is  highly  pictorial.  The  earth  is  of  course  repre- 
sented as  an  immovable  expanse,  or  flattened  body,  with  the 
vault  of  heaven  for  a  canopy.  The  stars  are  supposed 
to  be  the  lamps  ;  and  the  mountains  are  described  as  the 
" au-tdd,"  or  tent-pegs,  which  keep  down  the  margins:  v. 
S.  Ixxviii.] 

The  name  of  a  territory  in  pen.  Arabia,  pp.  37-48,  120,  122, 
210. 

The  "  Mount  Seir,"  and  the  adjacent  parts  which  are 
defined  in  Deut.  ii.  1-8,  and  are  referred  to  in  Judges  v.  4.  V. 
p.  113  f.n.  4.  [The  plateau  of  Seir,  the  highest  elevation  of 
which  is  about  4000  feet,  is  called  by  the  Arabs  Ar-dhu  's  saw- 
wan,  o\-  Jlmt-land.  It  overlooks  the  Dead  Sea  and  Wa-diu  '1 
A'raba,  and  in  some  respects  forms  a  barrier  between  Syria 
and  Arabia.] 

The  mountains  which  form  the  chief  feature  of  the  "  Sina- 
itic  peninsula,"  p.  25.  [The  mountain  from  whose  top,  ac- 
cording to  an  account  which  is  embodied  in  both  the  Hebrew 
and  the  Arabian  Scriptures,  the  Deity  entered  into  special 
relations  with  mankind,  no  more  admits  of  identification  than 
the  site  of  the  Garden  of  Eden  does.  The  Jewish  nation, 
never  knew  where  "  Tor  Sina  "  was.      The  Arabs  have  taken 


^  The  radical  idea  in  slm  \5  peace,  seairity,  salvation;  such 
as  those  enjoy  who  escape  from  evil  through  the  fulfilment 
of  an  obligation.  Practically,  the  word  is-ldm  signifies,  i/ie 
conforming  ■with  the  essentials  (" ar-Mn")  of  God's  law; 
and  the  undertaking  to  do,  or  say,  as  the  Prophet  has  done  or 
said.     The  Muslim's  salutation  to  his  brother  Muslim  is. 


^^  As  sa-l&niu  a'-lai-kum,  or  The  Peace  (i.e.,  God's  Peace, 
the  peace  of  believers)  be  on  you.  And  the  answer  is, 
"  A' -lai-huma  's  sa-ldm,"  On  you  be  the  peace:  with  perhaps 
the  addition  of  "uia  rah-ma-tu  'Vld-hi  wa  ba-ra-kd-tzi-hu" 
=  a7id  the  mercy  of  God  and  His  blessings. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


3S7 


JA-BAL  TU-WAIK      . 
P.  178. 


jAB-RA-fL   S^et  JaB-KIL] 

Ja-da-il   . 
Ja-gha-jagh    . 


Jais,  for  Kais  . 
Jai-sI,  for  Kai-si 
Ja-lal-abad    . 

Ja-lam     . 

JA-MAL       . 

Jam-baz   . 
Jam-bi-ya 
Ja-mi' 
Ja-rad     . 


"T-Ar"   from   the    Aramaic,    in    whicli    language    it    means 
viomitain^ 

The  name  of  a  mountain-range,  running  ahnost  due  south, 
which  is  described  by  Palgrave  as  "  the  backbone "  of  the 
Arab  peninsula.  According  to  the  same  traveller,  it  forms 
"a  broad  limestone  table-land,  at  no  point  exceeding,  so  far 
as  has  been  roughly  estimated,  the  limit  of  5000  feet  in  height, 
covering  an  extent  of  100  and  more  miles  in  width  ;  its  upper 
ledges  clothed  with  excellent  pasturage,  its  narrow  valleys 
sheltering  in  their  shade  rich  gardens  and  plantations,  usually 
irrigated  from  wells,  but  occasionally  traversed  for  some 
short  distance  by  running  streams."  ^  (Op.  cit.  in  Catalog.  No. 
7,  vol.  ii.  p.  239.)  \Tu-iuaik  is  a  diiitimitivc  from  tauk,  which 
means,  anything  that  suri'ounds  another  thing,  e.g.,  aj/oke^ 

The  Biblical  "  Gabriel,"  p.  4  et  f.n.  2. 

Synonym  of  ga-sd-il',  q.  v.     P.  29  f.n.  2. 

An  eastern  arm  of  the  Kha-bur,  in  N.W.  Al  Ja-zI-RA,  pp. 
74,  124.  The  "Gozan"  of  i  Chron.  v.  26  is  the  Ja-gha-jagh. 
The  Greeks  knew  the  same  stream  as  the  "  Hirmas."  It  is 
often  described  as  the  "  rivulet  of  Ni-si-bis "  (the  modern 
hamlet  of  Na-si-bin).  In  writing  the  name  as  we  do,  we 
follow  the  pronunciation  of  the  natives ;  but  others  make  it 
Jagh-ja-glia.  The  form  "  Jenijar"  which  Layard  uses  is 
merely  an  approximation.  In  one  of  Kiepert's  maps  the 
word  is  spelt  Djakhdjakha ;  and  in  another,  Dschachdschacha. 
Four  consonants  and  three  vowel  marks  suffice  in  Arabic. 

The  name  of  a  horde  in  N.W.  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  p.  75. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  historic  Afghan  town,  midway  between  Peshawar  and 
Cabul,  p.  274. 

[Another  name  for  the  tais,  or  he-goat.]  A  strain  in  Al 
Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  iii. 

The  Camel,  stcb  quo  v.  Index  ii.  Sed  v.  NOTE  ON  TRAN- 
SCRIPTION, in  prefixes  of  the  volume,  p.  ix  fn.  i  ;  ct  text, 
pp.  55  f.n.  I,  57  f.n.  i. 

A  horse-dealer,  p.  123  in  fn.  i.  V.  HORSE-DEALER  in 
Index  ii. 

The  skean^  or  "  slaughtering  steel "  of  the  Arabs,  p.  46 
f.n.  I. 

The  place  of  congregational  worship  among  the  Sun-nite 
MusHm,  p.  163  fn.  2. 

\^Stripperi\     The  locust,  pp.  12-14.     A  good  illustration  of 


1  The  flora  of  the  range  is  thus  touched  on  by  the  same 
writer:  "Except  the  date-palm,  the  ithel  or  ethel,  the 
markh,  a  large-leaved  spreading  tree,  the  wood  of  which  is 
too  brittle  for  constructive  purposes,  and  some  varieties  of 
acacia,  the  plateau  produces  no  trees  of  considerable  size ; 
but  of  aromatic  herbs  and  bright  flowers,  among  which  the 


red  anemone,  or  shekeek,  is  conspicuous,  this  region  is 
wonderfully  productive,  so  much  so  that  Arabic  writers 
justly  praise  the  sweet  scent,  no  less  than  the  purity  and 
coolness,  of  its  breezes." 

-  In  Arabic  a  hnife  is  "  sik-ktii." 


358 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Ja-rad — contintied. 


[Al]  Jar-ba    . 
Jar-jar    . 


Jat,  for  Kat 


[Al]  Jauf 


Jau-ha-ra  .  .  .  . 
[Al]  Ja-za-ir  .  .  .  . 
[Al]  Ja-zi-ra  .        .        .        . 

Jenghis  Kaan  [In  Chinese, 
"  Ching-sze"  or  perfect  luar- 
rior\     P.  89  f.n.  i. 


JiB-HA,  for  Jab-ha   . 
Jl-DA-A'      . 

JlD-RA-Nf 


the  flexibility  of  the  Arabic  language  is  afforded  by  the  way 
in  which  word  after  word,  each  containing  the  idea  of  denud- 
ing, is  formed  from  the  same  root  as  ja-rdd.  E.g.,  ja-rid, 
originally  a  palm-branch  with  its  leaves  stripped  off — the 
"  Djerid  "  of  Moorish  ballad  poetry — p.  150.  Other  deriva- 
tives severally  mean  the  bare  parts  of  the  body,  like  the 
face ;  one  who  is  stripped,  in  the  sense  of  being  reduced  to 
poverty  or  to  solitude ;  and,  to  name  no  more,  a  portion 
selected  or  severed  from  a  larger  set  or  body,  whether  as  a 
detachment  of  Horse,  or  a  pamphlet  or  newspaper. 

The  name  of  a  great  clan  of  the  Sham-mar,  p.  125. 

[Probably  a  word  taken  from  a  sound.]  One  meaning  of 
jar-jar  is,  the  bray  which  the  camel  reiterates  in  the  windpipe  ; 
akin  to  which  sense  is  that  of  chewing  the  cud.  The  spiked 
cylinder  with  which  they  break  up  the  sheaves  of  corn  is 
also  called  ^jar-jar,  p.  80.  In  Isaiah  xli.  15,  mo-rag  (equally 
in  Hebrew  and  Arabic  a  rotler)  is  used  for  jar-jar. 

Lucerne,  p.  31.  Towards  the  Persian  Gulf  this  crop  grows 
luxuriantly,  but  it  seems  to  find  Baghdad  less  congenial. 
In  Persia,  "jat"  is  called j/un-ja. 

[A  cavitf.]  Topographically,  any  depressed  tract  of 
country,  especially  one  of  basiJi  form.  Arabia  contains 
many  surfaces  of  this  description.     P.  37. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  name  of  a  people  on  the  Lower  Euphrates,  p.  84  f  n.  i. 

The  country  east  of  the  middle  part  of  the  Euphrates,  pp. 
63.  64,  65,  70-77,  78,  79,  103,  125,  218,  236,  269-276,  295. 

This  son  of  a  minor  Mongolian  prince  died  (1227)  the 
master  of  an  empire  which  stretched  far  into  Northern  China. 
He  also  created,  through  his  warlike  descendants,  Mongol, 
Mogul,  or  Mughal  dynasties  all  over  Asia.  An  incredibly 
large  sum  of  human  misery  must  be  written  down  to  Jenghis. 
One  of  his  armies  is  said  to  have  massacred  in  one  week,  at 
Hi-rat,  more  than  a  million  and  a  half  The  formidable  off"- 
shoot  from  his  house,  HuLAGU,  in  the  seven  days  following 
his  seizure  of  Baghdad  (iSth  February  1263),  permitted 
800,000  to  be  butchered.  But  if  we  except  the  presence  of 
.  the  Turks  on  the  Bosphorus,  and  the  existence,  in  Southern 
India,  of  the  Nizam's  Hyderabad — founded  (1712)  by  Ching 
Kulich  Khan,  better  known  as  Nizamu  '1  Mulk,  A-saf  Jah — 
the  vestiges  which  maps  now  retain  of  the  terrible  empire  of 
.  the  Mongols  are  inconsiderable. 

In  a  horse,  the  part  that  is  below  the  ears  and  above  the 
eyes,  p.  298. 

[The  root-idea  is  maiming?^  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the 
Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  which  is  called 
after  a  certain  Jid-rdn.    This  is  the  fancy  lineage  of  the  horse- 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


359 


Jid-rA-ni — contimicd. 


JlF-Ll        .... 

JIL 

JiL-FAN      .... 

Jl-MAI-SHAT       . 

Jl-NA-HU   'T   TAIR     . 

Jinn  et  Jan  [Anglice,  genii] 
Pp.  136  f.n.  I,  238. 


JlR-BI-A      . 
JU-BUR 
JU-NUB       . 
[PI.  oijanb.} 


breeders  of  the  Euphrates.  It  is  said  to  be  extinct,  except  in 
offshoots  transplanted  to  Europe  and  Egypt  by  royal  person- 
ages. But,  judging  from  the  statements  of  the  dealers,  every 
other  horse  in  whose  strings  is  a  "  Sak-la-wt  Jid-ra-nt"  this 
must  be  an  error.  The  name  has  even  become  proverbial. 
The  donkey-boys  of  Baghdad  and  Hilla,  when  one  of  their 
steeds  is  seized  with  a  fit  of  galloping,  dub  him  on  the  spot  a 
"  Sak-la-wi  Jid-ra-ni "  1  Even  so  should  every  reader,  before 
assigning  too  much  value  to  these  desert  stud  terms,  wait  till 
the  bearer  of  it  shall  have  given  proof  of  superiority.  Table 
p.  235  col.  ii. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235 
col.  iv. 

Straw,  p.  80  f  n.  3. 

The  name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi. 

\_Shaven  or  shorn?^  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Aeniza, 
Table  p.  121. 

[  Wing  of  the  bird.']  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA, 
Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

This  generic  name  is  connected  with  several  words  in 
other  Semitic  dialects,  but  the  root-sense  is  obscure.  The 
more  educated  of  the  Arabs  are  beginning  to  fight  shy  of 
demonology ;  but  the  JINN  stand  on  the  firm  basis  of  Al 
Kur-an.  According  to  one  view,  the  Order  includes  all  in- 
corporeal beings,  from  The  Devil,  par  excellence,  or  "  Satan  " 
{Shai-tdn),  down  to  the  puniest  elf  Others  assign  three 
divisions  to  the  unseen  kingdom  :  the  good,  or  angelic ; 
the  intermediary — i.e.,  the  JiNN  ;  and  the  absolutely  wicked, 
whose  leader  is  IB-LIS.^  A  curious  belief  exists  in  El  Prak, 
that  the  wolves  hunt  down  the  Jinn  and  eat  them  ! 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  ii. 

The  name  of  a  people  of  El  Prak,  p.  84  f.n.  i. 

\^Sides^  (i)  The  skirts  of  a  country,  p.  33 ;  (2)  the 
flanks,  or  barrel,  of  a  horse.  [Not  to  be  confounded  with 
Ja-nAb,  the  S.  wind,  from  the  same  root.] 


K 


Ka'b    [commonly   pronounced 
Cha'b].  P.  85. 


A  people  of  El  Prak.  They  now  overspread  Khuz-istan 
{q.  V.)  in  Persia  ;  and  their  camps  and  villages  are  distributed 
on  both  banks  of  the  Ka-run  river,  from  Ahwas  to  the  Shattu 
'l  A'rab.  Change  of  water  and  air,  and  intermixture  with 
other  nations,  have  altered  them  in  manners,  religion,  costume. 


^  In  the  Kui-an  Sliai-tdn  and  Ib-lis  [8m)3o\os]  are  inter- 
changeable terms.  The  former  is  said  by  European  scholars 
to  be  one  of  the  few  words  in  the  Kur-an  which  are  of  Christian 


origin.  It  is  held  to  have  been  acquired  by  Arabic  from 
the  Abyssinian,  although  introduced  before  Muhammad's 
time. 


36o 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Ka'b — continued. 


Ka'-ba      .... 
Pp.  38,  IIS  ^i  f-^s-  I   and 
128,  143  f.n.  6. 


Ka-bar 

Kabr  [in  Hebrew,  kebiti-ak'] 
Kabru  'l  khai-yal  maf-tuh 
KA-DHt  [in  Eur.  books,  Cadi ; 
and  in  Anglo-Indian,  Kasee\. 


Ka-dhi-main   . 


and  character.  They  are  now  more  Persian  than  Arab.  Their 
country  is  much  interspersed  with  arid  desert,  but  where 
there  is  water  they  are  cultivators.  Fa-la-ht-ya  is  their  prin- 
cipal settlement.  Their  Shekh  lives  at  Fai-li-ya,  on  the  Shattu 
'1  Arab,  a  few  miles  above  Mu-ham-ma-ra,  in  a  well-built 
chateau.  He  also  possesses  a  castle  on  the  opposite,  or 
Ottoman,  bank  of  the  river.  In  this  way  he  is  enabled  to 
be  "  not  at  home  "  to  the  officials  of  either  Government.  As 
a  third  refuge,  he  keeps  an  armed  iron  steamer  on  the  surface 
of  the  river.  Old-fashioned  territorial  people  of  his  class 
obstruct  the  path  of  centralisation.  Rights  which  they  re- 
gard as  their  ancestral  property  are  apt  to  be  sold  at  Teheran 
to  the  agents  of  European  Companies,  or  perhaps  given  away 
as  "concessions."  The  "Shekh  of  Muhammara"  lives  in  a 
constant  state  of  apprehension  lest  he  should  be  seized  by  a 
Persian  Governor  or  Commander,  and  forwarded  as  a  little 
present  to  his  not  too  much  loved  master  the  Shah. 

In  the  first  instance  this  is  a  name  given  to  bones  having 
certain  characters,  and  to  bones  used  as  dice.  Specially,  the 
"Ka'-ba"  or  " Kd-batii  V  bait"  is  the  great  building  which 
stands  towards  the  middle  of  the  precincts  known  as  the 
"Mas-jidu  'l  Ha-ram"  of  Mecca.  The  Ka'-ba  was  last 
rebuilt  in  A.D.  1627.  It  resembles  a  colossal  astragalus  of 
about  40  ft.  The  "  bfack  stone "  which  the  pilgrims  kiss  is 
let  into  the  wall,  inside,  about  4  ft.  above  the  ground.  This 
stone  exhibits  the  traces  of  having  at  least  once  felt  the 
spoiler's  fury ;  but  its  pieces  have  been  cemented  together, 
and  a  rim  or  frame  of  silver  encircles  the  stone.-^  The  relic 
is  the  sole  survivor  of  the  360  fetishes  which  were  lodged  in 
the  same  spot,  before  the  Arab  Prophet  did  for  the  Ka'-ba  of 
Mecca  what  Joshua  did  for  Jeroboam's  chapel  at  Bethel — 2 
Kings  xxiii.  15. 

The  name  of  a  plant,  p.  81  et  f  n.  4. 

\_B7irying^     A  grave  or  sepulchre,  pp.  no  fn.  i,  152  fn.  i. 

The  saying  of  the  Arabs,  p.  152  et  f.n.  i. 

The  Caliph's  chief  justiciary  officer  under  El  Is-lam's  earlier 
organisation,  pp.  43  fn.  3,  230  fn.  i.  [The  Ka-dhi  deals 
executively  with  cases,  and  the  Muf-ti  with  abstract  refer- 
ences.] 

[For  Mak-ba-ra-tu  'l  Ka-DHI-main,  or  burial-place  of  the 
two  Ki-dhims.]  The  name  of  a  town  near  Baghdad  which  the 
Persians,  and  all  Shi-ites,  greatly  venerate,  p.  312. 


'  Compare  the  following  record,  in  Dr  Johnson's  Journal 
of  his  Tour  in  the  Hebrides  :  "  The  place  is  said  to  be 
known"  (in  the  convent  churches  of  Icolmkill)  "where  the 
black  stones  lie  concealed  on  which  the  old  Highland 
chiefs,  when  they  made  contracts  and  alliances,  used  to 
take  the  oath  which  was  considered  as  more  sacred  than 


any  other  obligation,  and  which  could  not  be  violated 
without  the  blackest  infamy.  .  .  .  They  would  not 
have  recourse  to  the  black  stones  upon  small  or  common 
occasions  ;  and  when  they  had  established  their  faith  by  this 
tremendous  sanction,  inconstancy  and  treachery  were  no 
longer  feared." 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


^.6i 


[Al]  Ka-dir    . 
Ka-dish  .        .  • 

[PL  KU-DUSH.] 


KaF-FI-YA  et  CHAF-Ft-YA 
[For  KU-FI-YA.] 


Ka-fi-la 


Ka-fir 
p.  6. 


KAh 
Kah-tan  . 


Kah-wa   . 


{The  Poivcrftil  One.]  An  attribute,  used  as  name,  of  Allah, 
pp.  io6,  107  e(  f.n.  I. 

{Working for  a  livelihood ;  but  it  is  doubtful  if  the  root  be 
classical  Arabic]  The  name  which  the  Bedouin  bestow  on 
all  horses  of  which  they  cannot  tell  the  pedigrees,  pp.  22,  47 
et  f.n.  3,  249,  250  et  f  n.  i,  259,  260,  263. 

Ku-fi-ya  is  a  loan-word  in  Arabic.  It  is  the  Italian  eiiffia, 
the  Spanish  cofia,  and  our  coif.  The  Arabs  apply  it  to  any 
kerchief  [in  Turkish,  char-chaf\  but  chiefly  to  the  shawl- 
like covering  which,  with  a  rope  {ikal)  twisted  round  it,  forms 
their  head-dress,  p.  108.  [The  kaffi-ya  covers  the  poll,  shades 
the  eyes,  and  falls  over  the  neck  and  shoulders.  But,  like 
most  picturesque  objects,  it  is  untidy.] 

The  train  of  travellers  [perhaps  but  half  a  dozen,  perhaps  a 
host]  which  the  Persians  call  a  kdr-vdn  [our  "caravan"]  is 
termed  by  the  Arabs  a  ka-fi-la,  p.  311. 

The  simplest  meaning  of  this  word  is,  one  who  covers  up  an 
object.  This  is  the  sense  in  which,  in  S.  Ivii.  of  Al  KuR- 
AN,  it  is  applied  to  cultivators — i.e.,  those  who  bury  the  seed 
in  the  ground.  In  El  Is-LAM,  a  "Ka-fir"  is  one  who  dis- 
allows, rejects,  denies,  Muhammad's  mission  and  message. 
Logically,  nobody  who  professedly  does  so  should  object  to 
pass  by  this  description;  but  practically,  "Ka-fir"  is  used, 
like  ■"  infidel,"  offensively.  Among  the  Muslim  it  is  before 
all  things  necessary  to  be  a  believer.  Just  as  in  Israel 
David's  misdeeds  did  not  weigh  very  heavily  against  him  ;  so, 
in  Arabia,  the  due  discharge  of  religious  obligations  condones 
mere  offences  against  men. 

Kd-fir  is  too  technical  a  word  for  the  primitive  Bedouin. 
In  place  of  it  they  use  d^dil,  or  enemy — i.e.,  enemy  of  Allah. 
The  thought  that  any  one  exists  who  is  in  so  monstrous  a 
condition  shocks  them.  And  seeing  that  Allah  does  not  slay 
his  enemies,  some  of  them  are  apt  to  do  so  for  him. 

It  is  only  natural  that  the  Muslim  Afghans  should  assign 
the  name  "  Kafir-istan  "  to  the  "  unconverted  "  tracts  on  their 
borders.  But  the  use  of  "  Kaffre,"  or  "  Cafifre,"  first  by  the 
Portuguese,  then  by  the  Dutch,  and  now  by  ourselves,  to 
designate  numerous  tribes  of  Africa,  is  a  curious  instance  of 
the  extension  of  language. 
V.  p.  80  f  n.  3. 

(i)  The  Arabian  form  (as  is  supposed)  of  the  "Joktan"  of 
Gen.  X.,  p.  98.  (2)  The  name  of  a  Bed.  nation  of  Central 
Arabia,  pp.  59  f.n.  2,  62,  94,  100,  122,  291. 

The  decoction  which  we  call  coffee,  p.  no  fn.  2.  The 
coffee-house,  whether  covered  or  al  fresco,  is  also  called  kah- 
tva,  pi.  ka-hd-zvt.  What  the  public-houses  are  in  Europe,  the 
ka-ha-wi  are  in  the  towns  of  the  Arabs.  Homes  of  the 
humbler  order  are  so  tightly  packed  with  inmates,  that  their 
2  Z 


362 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Kaid 

Kai-dAr  . 

[Biblical  "  Kedar."] 
Kaidh 
Kai-lO-la 
Ka-im  ma-kam 
Kais 
KA-KA 

Kal-a'  Sher-gAt^ 


Ka-ma-ri 

Ka-m1s     . 

Ka-rA-mi-ta    . 
[PI.  of  Kar-mat; 


Kar-BA-lA 

Pp.  83,  132,  162,  294,  319. 


masters,  when  they  get  up  in  the   morning,  hasten   to   quit 
them  for  the  coffee-houses. 

The  iron  shackles  with  which  the  Arabs  secure  their  horses, 
p.  243  f.n.  I. 

The  Arabs  thus  pronounce  the  name  of  Abraham's  second 
son,  pp.  49  f.n.  3,  118. 

Summer,  p.  50  f.n.  2. 

The  Arab's  word  for  his  mid-day  nap,  p.  81  £'^  f.n.  i. 

A  minor  official  of  the  Osmanli,  p.  207  fn.  i. 

V.  in  art.  IM-RA-U  'L  Kais,  supra. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 
Et  V.  p.  281  fn.  2. 

A  series  of  grass  -  covered  mounds  extending  for  about 
two  miles  along  the  W.  bank  of  the  Tigris,  some  55  miles 
S.  of  the  site  of  Nineveh.  The  principal  mound  rises  in 
some  places  nearly  100  feet.  Dr  Budge,  of  the  British 
Museum,  informs  us  that  these  remains  are  as  old  as  B.C. 
1820;  that  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  the  time  of  the  Assyrian 
King  Tiglath  Pileser  1.  (B.C.  1130)  have  been  found  in  them  ; 
that  they  represent  the  "  city  of  Assur "  (Ellasar  of  Gen.  x. 
11);  and  that,  in  all  probability,  long  before  the  date  (1820 
B.C.)  of  Assyria's  becoming  an  independent  kingdom,  the 
Akkadians  and  Babylonians  had  a  fortress  there,  the  name 
of  which  resembled  that  now  given  to  these  ruins  by  the 
Arabs. 

V.  at  p.  72  a  reference  to  a  futile  attempt  which  a  late 
Governor-General  of  Baghdad  made  to  restore  Kal-a'  Sher- 
gat,  by  bribing  a  section  of  the  Sham-mar  to  settle  near  it 
and  cultivate;  so  that  the  Mosul  trade  might  again,  as  of 
old,  pass  along  the  right  bank  of  the  river,  instead  of  making, 
as  now,  a  great  detour  by  Ar-bil  and  Kar-kuk. 

Hindustani  name  for  the  disease  called  parap/e£-ia  in  horses, 
p.  314  ei  f.n.  I. 

The  long  cotton  shirt  which,  worn  under  the  cloak  or  a'M, 
forms  the  dress  of  the  primitive  Arabs,  pp.  108  f  n.  2,  140. 

The  followers  of  Ham-dan,  ii>mi  'I  Ash-a'th  (,;.  887  A.D.) 

[Ham-dan,  from  a  disfigurement  of  the  face,  was  called,  in 
the  local  Aramaic  dialect,  Ku7--ma-ta ;  which  the  Arabs 
made  into  Kar-mat.  V.  a  reference  to  the  "  Carmathians," 
p.   30  fn.   I.] 

Also  called  Mash-had  Hu-Sain,  or  place  where  Hti-sain 
was  martyred.  The  plain  of  Kar-ba-la  is  about  60  miles 
S.W.  of  Baghdad.  The  town  which  has  here  grown  up, 
though  of  modest  size,  is  one  of  the  most  flourishing  in  the 


1  This  spelling  proceeds  upon  the  assumption  that  Kal-a' 
Sher-g&t  is  a  name  of  the  Semitic  period.  If  so,  it  may 
equally  signify.  Fort  of  the  eastern  parts,  or  fort  which 
marked  the  Babylonian  limits  ;  and  Fort  commanding  the 


middle  (or  perhaps  the  bifurcations)  of  the  road.  It  is, 
however,  possible  that  either  or  both  parts  of  the  compound 
name  in  question  may  represent  some  still  more  ancient 
proper  name,  such  as  the  Kal-hu  or  "Calah"  of  Gen.  x.  11. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


363 


Kar-ba-la — continued. 


Kard 
Kar-kha  . 

KAR-KtiK 

[Al]  Kar-rar 
KA-SIB 

Ka-sim     . 

Ka-sir 

[Vulg.  "  Ga-strr^ 


[Al]  Kas-wa 
Ka-ta-ban 

KA-TfF        . 


Kau-kab  . 


Ka-wa-i'd 


Kaw-wa-li 

KHA-Bt>R  . 


Kha-di-ja 


Turkish  empire.  A'li's  own  tomb  is  at  Na-jaf,  about  50 
miles  further  south.  Pilgrims  from  all  parts  of  Islam  an- 
nually assemble  in  Kar-ba-la  and  Na-jaf,  to  recall  to  mind 
and  bewail  the  scenes  there  enacted  in  the  month  Mu-har- 
rMii,  a.h.  61.     [V.  supra,  in  art.  Hu-SAIN.] 

The  name  of  the  apparatus  with  which,  in  El  I'rak,  they 
draw  up  water,  p.  47  fn.  3. 

A  river  of  S. -Western  Persia,  p.  5  fn.  i. 

A  town  of  the  Kurds,  about  140  miles  N.  of  Baghdad,  pp. 
84  fn.  I,  159  f.n.  5,  261,  280,  300. 

An  epithet  of  A'li,  p.  239  f  n.  3. 

The  name  of  a  hound,  p.  145. 

[According  to  the  old  T^lAxXoXogi-sXs,,  sandy  ground  producing 
glia-dJid  bushesi]     A  part  of  Najd,  pp.  32  f.n.  i,  39,  258. 

Said  of  a  body  of  the  Bedouin  who  have  joined  themselves 
to  another  than  their  own  people,  p.  S3  fn.  i.  \^Ka-sir 
may  mean  one  whose  steps  are  shortened,  as  if  by  fetters  ; 
and  an  Arab  says  that  it  is  in  this  sense  that  the  word 
is  applied  to  those  who  dwell  with  strangers.  In  all 
countries  it  is  difficult  to  attain  the  perfect  mean  between 
neglecting  a  guest  and  hampering  him.  The  Persian  says, 
A-ma-dan,  ba  i-rd-da;  raf-tan,  ba  i-ja-za — i.e.,  To  come,  is  at  thy 
pleasure;  to  depart,  depends  on  thy  hosf s  permission.  Theodore 
of  Abyssinia,  it  will  be  remembered,  literally  shackled  his 
English  visitors  to  prevent  their  abrupt  departure.] 

\_Slit-cared?^  The  name  of  one  of  the  Prophet's  riding- 
camels,  p.  230. 

A  people  of  ancient  Yemen,  p.  97  f  n.  3. 

An  ancient  Arabian  town  on  the  Persian  Gulf,  p.  20.  [Ka- 
tif,  U'kair,  and  Ku-wait  are  the  principal  outlets  for  the  pro- 
ducts of  Central  Arabia.] 

Kau-kab  means  a  star ;  and  Tall  Kau-KAB,  or  MOUNT 
Kau-KAB,  is  the  name  of  a  solitary  volcanic  projection,  about 
300  ft.  high,  which  rises  abruptly  from  the  plain,  in  N.W. 
Al  Ja-zi-ra.     P.  73. 

At  p.  115  fn.  3,  see  this  word  considered  in  connection  with 
the  Arabian  tradition  that  Abraham  founded  the  Ka'-BA  of 
Mecca. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

A  river  of  N.W.  Al  Ja-ZI-RA,  pp.  72  fn.  i,  74,  75,  82, 
124,  244.  The  Greek  geographers  noted  the  Kha-bur  as  the 
"  Habor"  et  "  Chaboras."  Rising  in  the  fountains  of  RAsu  'l 
a'IN  {q.  v.),  it  enters  the  Euphrates  near  Kar-ki-si-ya  (Circe- 
sium).  The  name  Kha-bur  is  traceable  for  at  least  thirty 
centuries.    The  Tigris  also  owns  a  tributary  of  the  same  name. 

The  name  of  the  Prophet  Muhammad's  first  wife,  in  whose 
lifetime  he  married  no  other,  p.  17.  [Said  to  mean,  (i)  one 
prematurely  born  ;  (2)  small  or  delicate.] 


364 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


[Al]  Khai-bar 

P.   lOI. 


Khail 

Arabic   motto  on   title-page, 
pp.  57  f.n.  5,  264  f.n.  I. 


[Al]  Kha-la  . 
Kha-lil  . 


Khamr     . 

Kham-si  . 
Kha-rish 
Khark     . 

[Vulg.  "  Kharj."] 
Khashm  . 
Khatn     . 

KHA-TU-Nt-YA  . 


An  important  palm  oasis  in  the  debatable  land  between 
Al  Hi-jaz  and  Najd.  Before  Is-lam,  its  mountain-sides  and 
dark-green  valleys  formed  Jewish  townships.  At  the  present 
time  its  principal  inhabitants  are  Osmanli  soldiers,  and  the 
black  or  bronzed  cultivators  of  African  race  who  represent 
the  absent  Bedouin  soil-owners.  The  Aeniza  nation  hold 
inalienable  land-rights  in  the  old  Jew  country,  which  probably 
ranked  among  their  earliest  lordships  over  settled  parts. 
Every  year,  in  the  date  harvest,  they  gather  round  it,  to 
reckon  with  their  village  partners.  Even  those  divisions  of 
them  which  have  passed  far  away  have  left  their  traces  in  the 
nomenclature  of  its  localities.  In  settlements  on  the  Eu- 
phrates, it  is  only  the  townsman's  mare  that  we  find  owned 
in  part  by  a  nomad.  But  in  the  seven  Khai-bar  valleys,  every 
palm-stem,  and  even  the  houses  of  the  villagers,  more  or  less 
belong  to  the  Bedouin.  In  the  economy  of  the  Arabs,  it  is 
more  general  for  the  open  country  to  command  the  towns 
than  for  the  towns  to  protect  the  open  country.  The  village 
is  considered  to  belong  to  some  tribe  of  the  surrounding 
wilderness.  The  men  of  the  cloak  and  spear  are  its  "klm-fa- 
rd,"  or  protectors  ;  and  it  is  exclusively  under  their  escort 
that  caravans  approach  it  and  set  out  from  it. 

Horses  collectively,  as  in  a  stud  or  a  squadron.  [Accord- 
ing to  certain  Arab  scholars,  the  word  implies  the  idea  of 
pride;  and  the  generous  elation  with  which  the  well-bred 
and  healthy  horse  carries  himself  is  a  characteristic  feature. 
A  forgotten  versiiier  thus  describes  a  cavalry  march  in  one 
of  Cesar's  triumphs  : — 

"And  their  chargers  stepped  as  if  they  felt  that  they  were  Romans  too."] 

A  horseman  is  kliai-ydl,  p.  152  fn.  i. 

A  name  for  the  desert,  p.  18. 

A  friend.  Al  Kur-An  says,  in  S.  iv.  124,  And  Allah  took 
Abraliam  for  His  friend.  Hence  the  Patriarch's  title  of 
"Khalilu  'llah,"  p.   loi,  et  V.  p.   109  f.n.  3. 

Fermented  liquor,  and  generally,  every  description  of  "strong 
water,"  pp.  52-55. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

Ut  supra,  col.  iii. 

\Place  where  tlie  wind  bloivs?^  The  principal  town  of  Ya- 
ma-ma,  in  Najd,  pp.  32  fn.  i,  42. 

The  nose.     As  a  term  of  topography,  p.  75  fn.  i. 

Circumcising,  pp.  1 12-1 14  et  f.ns. 

The  name  of  a  small  lake  between  Sinjar  and  the  Euphrates, 
p.  74.  A  hamlet  has  grown  up  beside  it.  Many  houses  stand 
on  a  promontory  which  stretches  athwart  the  water.  When 
we  visited  the  spot  in  1887,  the  people  showed  the  usual  signs 
of   friendship,   but    they    had    no  chopped    straw   or   barley. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


3<55 


KhA-TU-n1-YA — coti  tinned. 


[Al]  Kha-wa-rij 
P.  30  f.n.  I. 


[Al]  Kha-za-i'l 
Khirr 


Khir-san        .... 
Khu-mai-yis   .... 

Khurj-in        .        .        .        . 

[Al]  Khurs    .        .        .        . 

Khuz-istan     .        .        .        . 
[The  Biblical  Elam  and  the 
classical  Susiana.]     P.  79. 


Their  lake  was  covered  with  wild-fowl,  which  they  declared 
that  they  were  without  the  means  of  shooting  or  snaring. 
Its  fish  were  said  to  have  poisoned  themselves  with  putrid 
locusts. 

[  The  goers  out  from,  or  against.']  In  order  to  understand  the 
distinctive  position  of  the  "  Kharijites,"  both  in  the  Prophet's 
lifetime  and  afterwards  under  the  U-may-yad  Caliphs,  it  is 
essential  to  remember  that  El  Is-lam,  in  its  first  conception, 
was  a  theocracy.  One  of  Muhammad's  Companions  said, 
There  never  zvas  a  Prophetic  dispensation  which  was  not  suc- 
ceeded by  a  kingdom  of  force.  The  truth  of  this  was  soon 
illustrated  in  the  case  of  Islamism.  Almost  from  the  first 
start,  reasons  of  State  were  allowed  to  outweigh  loftier 
aims  and  motives.  The  tide  of  worldliness  rose  higher  and 
higher  ;  enthusiasm  gave  place  to  "  orthodoxy "  ;  the  great 
spiritual  movement  resulted  in  the  setting  up  of  a  secular 
Arab  empire.  The  Kharijites  obstinately  resisted  this  pro- 
cess. They  formed  one  of  many  other  unbending  militant 
sects,  which,  for  the  sake  of  abstract  principles,  threatened 
to  involve  El  Islam  in  anarchy.  When  they  were  put  down 
in  Asia,  they  broke  new  ground  in  Africa. 

A  people  of  El  I'rak,  p.  84  f.n.  i. 

The  back-flow  from  a  river  into  a  natural  channel,  pp.  81, 
82.  [The  name  is  probably  imitative,  like  "whir"  from 
the  susurrus,  or  murmur  of  the  water.  In  the  same  way, 
both  murmur  {mar-mar)  and  susurrus  (sar-sar)  may  per- 
haps claim  to  be  of  native  growth  in  Arabic.  Several  kinds 
of  vociferous  creatures,  both  birds  and  insects,  are  called 
by  the  Arabs  sar-sar.  The  name  b/im  for  the  owl — in  Hin- 
dustani, ul-lft — is  common  to  them  and  to  the  Persians.] 

[^Dumb.]  The  name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI- 
LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

[From  kham-sa,  five.]  A  proper  name  of  the  Arabs.  The 
name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235 
col.  vi. 

A  pair  of  saddle-bags.  Reference,  with  illustration,  p. 
148.  [A  Persian  word  which  the  Arabs  claim,  and  write 
khii.r-jain.'] 

[Another  form  of  khii'-sdn.']  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al 
Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  seaboard  province  of  Western  Persia,  the  port  of 
which  is  Mu-HAM-MA-RA.  Evidently  the  name  is  a  later 
form  of  Khuz,  a  geographical  term  of  the  Sasanian  (corre- 
sponding with  the  early  Christian)  period  of  Persian  history. 
Some  identify  the  word  Kh1\z  with  "  Uwaja,"  which  occurs 
in  the  Persian  cuneiform  inscriptions,  and  perhaps  means 
Aborigines.  If  such  be  the  history  of  the  name,  the  pre- 
vailing feature  of  the  modern  province  of  "Khuz-istan"  agrees 


366 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Khuz-ISTAN — continued. 


Ki-AD 

KiD-DA-MI-YA  . 
KlF-RI 


KiN-DA      . 

KiN-YAN   . 
KiR-MAN-SHAH 


with  it.  For,  while  its  southern  and  champaign  division  is 
overspread  by  ahen  immigrants  (v.  art.  Ka'b),  the  mountain- 
ranges  which  traverse  its  northern  part  shelter  a  nation  {v. 
art.  BakHT-I-A-RI)  pre-eminently  aboriginal.  The  former 
tract  is  now  loosely  called  "  A'rabistan,"  or  place  of  Arabs ; 
and  there  is  a  growing  tendency  to  bring  the  Bakht-i-a-ri 
territory  also  under  the  same  official  designation. 

'lEasy  to  lead.']  The  name  of  a  sub-strain  in  the  stock  of 
Ku-hai-lAn,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

[From  kitd-dam,  in  fro?it.'\     A  kind  of  dagger,  p.  46  et  f.n.  i. 

The  name  of  a  small  town  which  the  Turks  call  Sa-LA-hI- 
YA,  N.E.  of  Baghdad,  on  the  post-road  to  Mosul,  p.  84 
f.n.  I. 

The  name  of  an  ancient  Arabian  monarchy,  p.  50.  [Before 
the  Prophet's  birth  Kin-da  had  lost  its  hold  on  Eastern  and 
Central  Arabia,  and  contracted  to  its  original  seat  in  Hadh- 
RA-MAUT.] 

[Clusters  0/ dates.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA, 
Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

This  is  a  very  well-known  division  of  Western  Persia  ;  but 
a  few  notes  made  on  the  spot  itself  may  be  acceptable.  One 
feature  of  the  whole  region  is,  the  amenity  of  the  climate. 
The  flag-town,  which  is  of  the  same  name  with  the  province, 
is  4760  feet  above  the  sea.  In  winter  it  receives  a  great  deal 
of  snow,  but  the  summer  is  temperate.  The  Kara  Su,  or 
dlack  water,  which  washed  the  walls  of  the  ancient  city,  passes 
within  two  or  three  miles  of  the  modern  one.  Commercial 
activity  constitutes  another  feature.  Wheat  and  gums  are 
the  chief  exports ;  the  caravansaries  teem  with  merchants 
and  pilgrims ;  and  the  settled  population  of  about  50,000, 
though  rigorously  governed,  are  in  no  wise  oppressed  by 
poverty.  Those  of  them  who  send  produce  to  London  have 
long  desired  to  connect  the  Kara  Su  with  the  head  streams 
of  the  Ka-run,  so  as  to  obtain  a  continuous  water-way  to 
Mu-ham-ma-ra,  in  lieu  of  the  present  trade-route,  which  goes 
by  Baghdad,  and  thence  down  the  Tigris.  In  this  part  of 
Persia,  fertile  tracts — covered  with  corn-fields,  avenues  of  trees, 
summer-houses,  and  gardens — are  intersected  by  rugged  and 
precipitous,  but  not  very  lofty,  mountains. 

Some  of  our  readers  may  appreciate  a  slight  allusion  to  an 
antique  custom  which  prevails  in  Kirmanshah.  In  the  same 
moment  that  an  important  traveller  alights  at  his  host's 
threshold,  a  sheep,  or  a  steer,  is  slaughtered  before  him.  And 
when,  for  example,  the  proprietor  of  a  village  rides  up  to 
visit  it,  or  passes  it  on  a  journey,  the  principal  inhabitants 
meet  him  and  perform  the  same  ceremony.  This  usage  is 
not  exactly  the  same  as  the  hospitable  Arab  practice  of 
preparing  a  lamb  on  the  arrival  of  a  stranger ;  for  the  meat 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


367 


Kir-mAn-ShAh — continued. 


Ko-CHAR  . 


KO-DA 
KU-BAI-SA 


Ku-bai-shAn  . 

[Fem.  ku-hai-sha.'] 
Ku-dhA-a' 

Ku-hai-lAn     . 
[From  Ku-HAIL.] 


KU-HAI-LA-TU   'L   A'JUZ 
KU-LAIB    . 
KU-MAIT  . 
KUMIS 

[Al]  Ku-raish 


is  not  served  to  the  visitor,  but  is  given  in  his  name  to  others. 
The  Mullas  say  that  this  action  is  purely  an  expression  of 
respect — a  view  which  is  borne  out  by  the  fact  that  the  guest 
frequently  stays  the  performance  of  it ;  just  as  officials  in 
India  "  remit,"  or  return,  the  "  offerings  "  that  are  made  to 
them.  But  the  inhabitants  of  Kirmanshah  retain  many 
marks  of  their  Aryan  origin.  The  Persians  to  this  day 
begin  their  letters  with  the  formula,  May  I  be  tliy  sacrifice. 
And  we  shall  probably  not  be  mistaken  if  we  regard  the 
Kurdish  observance  now  noticed  as  a  vestige  of  the  very 
ancient  conception  that  calamities,  and  even  sins,  admit  of 
being  transferred  to  others.^ 

[Probably  from  the  Tatar  word  kfich,  to  move  from  place  to 
place.]  [The  name  Ko-ckar  {-p.  133)  indicates  the  nomadic 
habit,  apart  from  nationality.  For  example,  Afghanistan 
contains  many  groups  of  different  races  who  move  about 
with  their  camels,  and  are  known  as  Kuch-is.] 

The  tax  which  the  Osmanli  take  from  sheep-owners,  p.  84 
fn.  2. 

[Plastering,  or  building^  The  name  of  a  small  settlement, 
of  about  300  houses,  in  Sha-mi-ya.  Many  generations  of 
pedlar  life  have  imparted  to  its  inhabitants  a  volubility  of 
language  which  renders  a  "  Ku-bai-si "  easily  recognisable. 
P.  294  fn.  2. 

[From  kabsh,  a  ram  ;  figuratively,  a  leader.]  The  name 
of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-lAn,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

A  noble  Bedouin  nation,  of  the  stock  of  Kah-tan,  which 
is  often  mentioned  in  the  early  Arabian  poetry,  p.  117. 

A  comprehensive  term  for  all  the  "  thoroughbred  "  horses 
of  the  Arabs.  The  derivation  of  the  word  considered,  pp. 
233,  234.  Table  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAIL,  or  Ku-hai-lAn, 
p.  235.  Other  references,  pp.  183,  206,  210,  240,  248,  249, 
253,255,256,  258,269,  271,  279. 

The  traditional  epithet  of  the  parent  mare  of  all  the  stock 


of  Ku-hai-lAn. 


Pp. 


2^2    2'K'\    2 


.234- 


[Al]  Kur-An  . 


The  William  Tell  of  Arabian  legendary  history,  p.  116  et 
f.n.  2. 

The  dark  bay  colour,  Table  p.  262.  Other  references,  pp. 
4,  260.     [Kji-niait  is  also  a  very  old  Arab  word  for  wine.] 

The  drink  of  the  Mongols,  p.  60  et  f.n.  i. 

The  best-known  name  of  the  branch  of  Ki-na-na  settled  in 
and  about  Mecca,  of  which,  in  the  "  Ba-nu  Ha-shim,"  or  House 
of  Hji-shim,  the  Arab  Prophet  was  born.  Pp.  17,  116,  117, 
128,  160,  293. 

The  "  Message,"   or  "  Admonition,"  which  now  forms  the 


'  In   old-fashioned    Indian  households   the  crones  crack 
their  knuckles  and  make  passes  with  their  arms,  above  the 


heads  of  young  persons,  under  the  idea  of  thereby  taking 
upon  themselves  the  misfortunes  that  are  hanging  over  them. 


368 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


[Al]  Kur-An — continued. 


Kurd 


KuT  [officially,  K^Ltu  V  Pind-ra, 
V.  art.  Ku-WAIT,  infra?\ 


sacred  Book  of  the  Muslim,  was  described  by  him  who 
preached  it  as  a  "  plain  Kur-an,"  S.  xxxvi.  Much  dis- 
cussion has  arisen  as  to  the  signification  of  the  word  kur-dn. 
It  comes  from  ka-ra-a  =  legere ;  and  the  accepted  meaning  of 
a  reading,  and  equally  a  recitation,  seems  perfectly  adequate 
and  satisfactory.  This  opinion  is  expressed  with  due  defer- 
ence to  the  view  on  the  same  point  which  the  eminent 
Oriental  scholar  Deutsch  proposed  in  his  famous  article  on 
"Is-lam"  in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  October  1869,  p.  306. 


According  to  Deutsch  knr-dn   means. 


not  a  "  reading,"  but 


a  "cry."  His  argument  is,  that  the  text  which  begins  with 
"  Ik-RA  !  "  —  the  imperative  ol  ka-ra-d  —  though  placed  by 
the  redactors  in  Su-ra  xcvi.,  stands  first  in  point  of  date 
of  the  prophetic  utterances ;  that  in  "  ik-rd "  there  "  lies 
hidden  "  one  of  those  "  very  few  onomatopoetic  words  "  (sc. 
crj',  sc/irei,  &c.)  which  are  "  still  common  to  both  Semitic 
and  Indo-European ; "  and  lastly,  that  "  Muhammad  dis- 
tinctly denied  being  a  scholar."  ^  Our  only  reason  for 
noticing  this  speculation  is,  that  several  recent  writers  have 
appropriated  it.  The  philological  part  of  it  is  purely  im- 
aginative. The  residue  breaks  down  before  the  simple  fact 
that  oral  recitation  was  the  primitive  Arab's  method  of  read- 
ing.   The  "  Ik-ra  !  "  of  Gabriel  merely  means,  RECITE  ALOUD  ! 

V.  as  to  the  rationale  of  Al  Kur-An's  "  down-sending," 
or  "  revelation,"  p.  4  f  n.  2  ;  and  on  the  point  of  its  literary 
history,  a  note,  under  Kur-An,  p.  xii.  of  prefixes  of  this 
volume. 

Translations  from  Al  KuR-An  occur  at  pp.  21  fn.  i,  50, 
54,  109  fn.  2,  130  fns.  2  et  3,  134  fn.  i,  135  fins.  3  et  4,  158, 
159,  160  fn.  I,  163  fn.  4,  227. 

Other  references  will  be  found  at  p.  vii  of  prefixes  of  volume, 
pp.  12  fn.  3,  17  fn.  I,  20  fn.  3,  27,  28,  44,  52,  53,  96  et  f.n.  i, 
loi,  102  et  fn.  2,  106  fn.  i,  1 10  fn.  2,  iii  fn.  3,  113,  115,  133, 
135,  136,  157,  159  f-n.  6,  160,  161,  189,  227  fn.  5,  230,  281,  299. 

The  name  of  an  important  Asiatic  nation,  pp.  5,  6  et  f  n.  i, 
16,  70,  133  et  fn.  4,  134,  159  et  fn.  5,  261,  281  et  fns.  i  and  2, 
282  et  fn.  2,  283,  284,  312.  [In  Arab  parlance  a  Kurd,  or 
anything  "  Curdish,"  is  "  Kur-di "  ;  out  of  which  they  form 
the  plural  "  Ak-rad,"  the  Kurds.] 

An  Ottoman  station  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Tigris,  about 
half-way  between  Baghdad  and  Bussorah,  in  the  country  of 
the  Ba-nu  Lam  Arabs,  p.  84  f  n.  i. 


^  In  S.  .\xix.  it  is  adduced  as  a  miraculous  sign  that, 
Before  it  {i.e.,  before  Al  Kur-an]  thou  [Muhammad]  didst 
not  recite  any  book  ;  nor  didst  thou  zuith  thy  right  hand  write 
(transcribe)  one.  In  another  Su-ra  [62],  it  is  noticed  that 
tlie  Prophet  belonged  to  the  "  pagan,"  or  "  gentile,"  section 
of  the  Arabs,  whose  natural  condition  of  course  was  that  of 


the  unlearned.  Nevertheless,  evidence  is  wanting  to  decide 
the  moot-point  of  whether  Muhammad  was  acquainted  with 
writing.  All  that  can  be  safely  said  is,  that,  so  far  as  is 
known,  he  employed  some  one  else  when  he  had  anything 
to  write. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT.  369 

Ku-WAIT  .....  [A  diminutive,  formed  by  the  Arabs  from  the  Aryan  word 

Pp.  32  f.n.  I,  36,  150,  17s,  Mt,  our  cot.  KAt  has  spread  over  the  East  in  the  sense  of  a 
181,  210,  211,  212,  254,  260,  fort,  or  other  substantial  building.]  The  bay,  harbour,  and 
300.  Arab  town  of  Ku-wait,  at  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  form 

for  all  who  know  them  ideal  places — because  of  the  salubrity 
of  the  air,  the  briskness  of  the  commerce,  the  hardihood  of  the 
sailors,  the  success  with  which  ship-building  on  a  small  scale 
is  practised,  and  the  remoteness  of  the  Ottoman  Government. 
Ku-wait  is  also  called  Kani  ^ — in  European  maps  written 
"  Grane  " — from  the  bay  being  /zi^rw-shaped. 
Kuw-WA A  town  in  Najd,  p.  32  fn.  i. 


L 

La-b1d [One  meaning  of  la-bid  in  Arabic  is,  a  horse's  mikli-lat  or 

fodder-bag.]    The  lives  of  the  seven  poets  of  the  Mu-cil-la-kdt 
{q.  ■z'.),  extended  over  upwards  of  a  century.     La-bid  was  the 
latest  of  the  series,  and  the  only  one  who  embraced  Islamism. 
He  is  said  to  have  lived  till  A.D.  661,  or  even  later. 
Translations  from  his  poem,  pp.  106  fn.  2,  145  fn.  i. 
Other  references,  pp.  49  fn.  i,  61  fn.  4. 

LiBD The  felt  which  they  who  do  not  know  how  to  weave  make 

by  beating,  or  compacting,  wool  into  a  fabric.  The  Kurds  of 
both  sexes  cover  themselves  in  winter  with  seamless  and 
ungraceful  cloaks  of  this  material.  Among  the  Arabs  libd 
is  a  very  old  name  for  a  saddle,  p.  143  et  f  n.  2.  The  Persian 
word  for  libd  is  nd-mdd,  ex  quo  the  Anglo-Indian  form 
"numbda,"  meaning  the  piece  of  felt  which  in  warm  climates 
they  place  between  the  horse's  back  and  the  saddle.  When 
saddles  can  be  properly  dried,  and  from  time  to  time  re- 
stuffed,  the  advantages  of  the  "  numbda  "  \]iam-da\  are  doubt- 
ful. At  all  events,  it  should  never  be  made  of  dyed  material, 
Even  a  red  or  yellow  binding  will  on  a  warm  day  discolour 
the  horse's  coat.  It  is  better  to  vandyke  the  edges  of  a  saddle- 
cloth, as  the  Kurds  do,  than  to  bind  them. 

LiB-Dl The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  iii. 

Lu-BIA A  species  of  bean,  which  in  El  I'rak  bears  in  autumn.     It 

[Gr.  X0/S09.]  does  not  stand  up,  like  its  congener  the  ba-kil-la,  but  covers 

the  surface  of  the  ground  with  its  dark-green  leaves  and 
woody  branches,  p.  82. 

Ltr-Rl Of  or  belonging  to  the  Lur  nation,  p.  284. 


1  In  f.n.  2  p.    12S,  it  is  said  that  the  farts  of  the  head     i      particular  religion  are  "karn."     But  at  Bussorah,  where  this 
ivhence  the  horns  grow  are  "kirn";  while  the  people  of  a      I      note  is  added,  scholars  denote  both  these  words  by  "karn." 


370 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


M 


Ma 

Madh-bah 

Ma-dhIf  .        .        .        . 

Ma-dI-na 

For  page  references  v. 
dina  in  Index  ii. 


Ma'-GIL     . 

[For  Ma'-kil.] 
Mahd 
Mah-mud  of  Ghaz-ni 


Mah-ra  . 
Mai-mCin  . 
Mai-san  . 


[Pronounced  uuz-c.]     Water,  pp.  3,  99  f.n.  4. 

The  throat,  or  throttle,  p.  253  et  f.n.  i. 

[Post-classical]  The  place  in  which  guests  are  received, 
pp.  104,  295. 

[Sound  authorities  hold  that  this  word  is  not  Arabic,  but 
Me-  a  loan-word  from  the  Aramaic  ;  in  which  language  it  means 
sphere  of  authority,  ox  province,  and  then  a  city.]  The  Medina 
["  Ma-di-na-tu  V  Ra-sAli  'llah  "]  of  Al  Kur-AN  [S.  xxxiii.] 
dates  but  from  the  Flight.  From  that  time  onward,  till  the 
U-may-yads  removed  the  seat  of  empire  from  it  to  Damas- 
cus, it  was  a  place  of  the  first  importance.  But  long  before 
Is-lam,  the  oasis  of  Yath-rib,  about  200  miles  north  of  Mecca, 
in  which  the  modern  Medina  is  situated,  witnessed  events  of 
no  small  magnitude  ;  now,  unhappily,  too  much  confused  by 
fable  to  be  intelligible.  Enough  to  notice,  that  the  oasis, 
when  it  comes  into  the  light  of  history,  was  held  by  Jews. 

Any  halting-ground  of  camels,  where  they  are  hobbled 
with  the  rope  called  al  i'-kdl,  p.    17. 

A  child's  resting-place,  or  cradle,  p.  275  f.n.  i. 

The  Afghan  town  of  Ghaz-ni,  the  name  of  which  was 
carried  a  generation  ago  into  our  peerage  by  a  British  General, 
stands  associated  from  a  much  earlier  period  (A.D.  1000)  with 
one  of  the  great  figures  of  Eastern  history.  Rapid  ascents 
and  rapid  falls  have  always  been  common  in  the  vast  ter- 
ritories washed  by  the  Oxus  and  the  Jaxartes.  Mah-mud's 
father,  Su-bak-ta-gin,  the  son  of  a  Turk-i  slave,  was  the  first 
of  a  new  family,  by  which  were  founded  the  illustrious  "  Ghaz- 
navi "  dynasty,  and  the  Muslim  empire  of  India.  Mah-mud 
nine  times  invaded  India.  From  the  Punjab  to  Guzerat  he 
demolished  the  idols  in  the  Hindu  temples.  He  collected 
at  Ghaz-ni  the  spoils  of  innumerable  cities.  But  after  all 
he  was  essentially  a  plunderer.  The  eloquent  old  woman 
who  reproved  him  for  taking  more  countries  than  he  could 
govern  (p.  43)  was  perfectly  right.  The  opposite  in  this 
respect  of  Alexander,  he  made  no  attempt  to  tame  the 
nations  which  submitted  to  him.  It  is  only  his  kindness  to 
the  poet  Fir-du-si,  and  to  other  men  of  letters,  that  serves 
to  mitigate  Time's  judgment  on  him. 

A  maritime  district  of  Arabia  ;  the  climate  of  which  is  very 
unfavourable  to  the  development  of  the  human  family,  p.  32. 

[Fortunate,  from  the  same  root  as  YEMEN.]  The  name 
of  A'li's  charger,  p.  239. 

[Said  to  describe  the  characteristic  walk  of  the  high-bred 
Arabian.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p. 
235  col.  i. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


i/^ 


[Al]  Mai-sir  .        .        . 
[Al]  Maj-ma'  .        .        . 

Makh-zI  .... 
[Al]  Ma-liku  'dh  dha-lIl 

MAM-LtJK  ... 

Man-da-li 


Ma'-ra-ka 

Mar-bat  . 

Mar-din  . 


Ma-rib     . 

P.  97. 
Mar-kaz  . 


[Al]  Mar-ta'  . 
Ma-sa-i'b  . 

Ma-sa-ri-ba     . 

MAsH       .        .        . 
MA  shA  Allah 
Ma-shA-hif     . 
[Al]  Ma-s1h    . 

Mas-jid    . 

Masjidu  'l  Ha-rAm 


Ma-tA-ri-fa    . 


Mat-ra-ha 


A  game  of  chance  of  ancient  Arabia,  p.  54  fn.  2. 

[^Place  of  Junction.']  The  name  of  a  town  in  Najd,  p.  32 
f.n.  I.     One  of  the  "  points  "  of  a  horse,  p.  145. 

{Execrable.]     Applied  by  the  Wahabis  to  tobacco,  p.  164. 

\_Tke  erring pi'ince.]     A  sobriquet  of  Im-ra-u  '1  Kais,  p.  50. 

["  Mameluke."]     P.  150  ct  fn.  i. 

The  name  of  a  pastoral  town,  of  about  1500  houses,  three 
days'  journey  E.  by  N.  of  Baghdad,  p.  282  f  n.  i.  [Vague, 
though  not  unrecorded,  traditions  indicate  the  probability 
-that  if  excavations  were  made  at  Man-da-li,  traces  throwing 
light  on  the  history  of  Christianity  in  ancient  Persia  would  be 
discovered.] 

A  name  for  the  Bedouin  saddle,  p.  141.  [If  mci-ra-ka  be 
derived  from  ark,  sweat,  then  the  word  corresponds  with  the 
Persian  name  for  a  saddle,  kho-gir?[ 

[Lit.,  place  zvhere  a  beast  is  tied^  Used  by  the  Bedouin, 
like  rasn  {q.  v.),  for  what  we  call  a  "  strain  "  of  horses,  p.  236. 

A  historical  city,  picturesquely  seated  on  a  summit  of 
Mount  Masius,  about  4000  ft.  above  the  sea,  in  the  Di-ar-bakr 
Pashalik,  p.  74. 

One  of  the  ancient  cities  of  Arabia,  to  the  miraculous 
destruction  of  which  Al  Kur-An  alludes  in  S.  xxxiv. 

The  spot  zvhere  the  Shekh  strikes  his  spear  in  the  ground,  to 
form  the  centre  of  the  encampment.  The  word  bears  many 
secondary  meanings  from,  in  geometry,  the  centre  of  a  circle, 
up  to  the  widest  extensions. 

A  general  name  for  desert  pasture,  p.  105. 

[PI.  of  vias-db,  untamed?^  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the 
Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

[From  mis-rib,  q.  v.  p.  107.]  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of 
the  Sba'  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121  ;  p.  271. 

The  name  of  a  vetch,  p.  82  f.n.  i. 

An  expression  of  the  Arabs,  pp.  38  f.n.  3,  124  fn.  i. 

[PI.  of  viash-hufl\     Canoes,  p.  84  f.n.  i. 

The  form  in  which  the  title  "  Messiah "  is  written  in  Al 
Kur-An.     P.  106  et  f  n.  I. 

The  Arabic  word  which  in  English  is  written  "mosque," 
and  in  Spanish  "  inesquita."     P.  163  f.n.  2. 

Thus  is  designated  the  whole  space  (an  oblong  square,  250 
paces  long  and  200  broad)  which  contains  the  Ka'-BA  {q.  v.) 
of  Mecca,  with  many  other  buildings  and  standing  places,  p 
116. 

[From  mat-raf,  a  certain  garment  having  coloured  or 
figured  borders.]  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Aeniza, 
Table  p.  121. 

\Tliat  upon  which  one  throivs  liinisclf?\  A  name  for  the 
Bedouin  saddle,  p.  141.  [In  some  Bedouin  nations  they  dis- 
tinguish between  the  ma'-ra-ka  and  the  viat-ra-ha ;  restrict- 


372 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Ma-wa-hIb 
Ma-wa-li 

MA-YA 

Ma'z 
Mecca 

Mi'-DAN     . 

MlH-JAN  . 
MlH-MAZ  . 
MlJ-WAL   . 

Mikh-lAt 
Mil-wAh  . 


MiN-DA-KHt 
MiN-DAL  . 
Mi'-NI-KI  . 


MiR-l'Z       . 
MiR-RA      . 

Mi-shAsh 
Mis-ran  . 

MokhA    . 


Mosul 

For   page    references   v.    In- 
dex ii. 


ing  the  former  name  to  the  saddle  proper,  and  the  latter  to 
the  cloth  or  felt  which  is  placed  under  it.] 

[Root-idea,  that  oi giving^  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the 
Sba'  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

{Defenders,  allies,  and  so  forth.]  A  horse-breeding  people 
of  the  country  round  Aleppo  and  Ha-ma,  p.  271. 

The  horse's  frog,  p.  179. 

A  nation  of  Najd,  p.  59  f  n.  2. 

[For  Mak-ka?[      V.  Index  ii. 

The  name  of  a  nation  of  the  Babylonian  marsh-land,  p.  84 
f.n.  I. 

Et  MISH-A'B:  v.  p.  142. 

[Root  meaning,  JiicJdng^     The  spur,  p.  142  (illustration). 

Shekh of  the  Sham-mar,  p.  72.     [  V.  niij-wal  in  art. 

Dir-a',  supra^ 

The  feeding-bag,  p.  318  fn.  3. 

[Large  in  the  al-ivdh,  i.e.  any  of  the  spread-out  bones,  especi- 
ally the  shoulder-blades.]  The  name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock 
of  Ku-hai-lAn,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

[Hard  steel.']      Ut  supra,  same  column. 

The  name  of  the  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN  to 
which  the  Darley  Arabian  was  reckoned,  Table  p.  235  col. 
vi.  et  f.n.  to  Table  ;  also  pp.  213  f.n.  i,  et  237. 

The  name,  in  Sin-jar,  of  the  breed  of  Angora  goats  which 
is  there  much  cultivated,  p.  133  et  f.n.  4. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

Splint,  p.  177  f.n.  I. 

Gtit,  or  intestine,  use  of,  by  the  horse-exporters,  to  produce 
a  certain  blemish,  p.  313. 

The  well-known,  but  now  utterly  dwindled,  town  of  Yemen, 
on  the  Red  Sea  coast,  p.  20.  [Mokha,  or  "Mocha,"  never 
produced  coffee.  The  surrounding  country  is  sterile.  The 
European  name  of  "  Mocha  coffee  "  is  out  of  date.  It  orig- 
inated in  the  days  when  the  port  of  Mocha  enjoyed  a  short- 
lived prosperity  in  connection  with  the  coffee  trade.] 

In  Arabic,  Al  Mmi-sil  means  the  place  of  junction ;  and 
El  Ja-zi-ra  and  El  I'rak  touch  one  another  near  the  town 
of  Mosul,  on  the  Upper  Tigris,  over  against  the  site  of  Nine- 
veh. [Marco  Polo  saw  Mosul  in  the  13th  century,  and 
with  his  usual  touch  of  exaggeration  described  it  as  "  the 
very  great  kingdom  of  Mavvsal."  He  also  noted  that 
"  all  the  cloths  of  gold  and  silk  that  are  called  Mosolins 
are  made  in  this  country  " — Marco  Polo,  Bk.  I.  ch.  v.]  Euro- 
pean imports  have  long  ago  killed  the  old  manufactures  of 
Mosul.  Except  for  students  of  antiquity,  and  in  particular 
for  those  desirous  of  investigating  ancient  Eastern  Christian- 
ity, the  town  now  offers  but  few  attractions. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


373 


Moth 
mu-adh-dhin 


The  Indian  word,  p.  47  f.n.  3. 

This  word  is  now  established  in  English  dictionaries  in  the 
form  "  muezzin."  It  is  one  of  a  series  of  words  in  which  are 
d-dhdn,  a  sound,  and  u-dimn,  the  ear.  In  El  Is-lam,  the 
A-dhan  is  the  Call  to  Prayer ;  and  he  whose  office  it  is  to 
raise  it,  from  the  Mosque  minaret  or  other  elevated  station, 
is  the  Mu-ADH-DHIN,  p.  128.  [The  A-dhan  was  never,  so 
far  as  is  known,  dictated  in  precise  terms  by  the  Prophet. 
It  accordingly  admits  of  slight  variations  ;  but  the  follow- 
ing is  the  prevailing  formula  : — 


Allahu  ak-barM    Allahu  ak-bar  !    Allahu  ak-bar  !    Allahu  ak-bar  ! 

I  declare  that  there  is  no  object  of  worship  save  Allah  !  {twice.) 

I  declare  that,  of  a  truth,  Muhammad  is  the  Apostle  of  Allah  !  {twice.) 

Hie-  to  Prayer  !    Hie  to  Prayer ! 

Hie  to  the  means  of  the  attainment  of  Paradise  !  {twice) 

Prayer  is  better  than  sleep  !  ^    Prayer  is  better  than  sleep  ! 

Allahu  ak-bar  !    Allahu  ak-bar  ! 

LA  i-la-ha  il-la  'llah  !  * 


[Al]  Mu-a'l-la-kat  = 


Translations  from  (or  refer- 
ences to) — 

Im-ra-u  'l  Kais,  pp.  49,  143. 

Ta-ra-fa,  pp.  57,  234,  255 
f.n.  I. 


The  Jews,  we  know,  used  the  trumpet  for  the  purpose 
of  calling  people  together ;  while  the  bell  and  the  gong 
were  identified  with  numerous  cults.  The  Arab  Prophet 
lost  nothing  from  being  thus  led  to  prefer  the  human 
voice.] 

The  Seven  Mu-a'l-la-kat  are  seven  recitative  poems  of 
the  pre-Islamic  Arabs.  They  were  committed  to  writing 
soon  after  Muhammad.  A  little  later,  some  Scott  or  Ritson 
■ — probably  Ham-mad  of  our  8th  century — included  them  in 
one  collection.  At  least,  the  view  now  generally  accepted 
is  that,  although  other  pieces  existed,  the  Seven  which  are 
contained  in  the  standard  collection  at  a  very  early  period 
received  the  preference.  The  names  of  the  seven  poets  are 
Im-ra-u  '1  Kais,  Ta-ra-fa,  Zu-hair,  La-bid,  A'n-ta-ra,  A'mr  ibn 
Kul-thum,  and  Ha-rith  ibn  Hil-li-za.  It  is  impossible  for 
any  one  who  has  sojourned  in  the  Arabian  desert  to  read 
these  heirlooms  of  antiquity  without  feeling  their  fascinations. 


^  Meaning  Allah  is  greatest. 

-  The  word  rendered  "hie"  is  hai-ya  in  Arabic.  It  re- 
sembles an  interjection ;  but  the  Arab  grammarians  ex- 
plain it  as  "between  a  verb  and  a  noun."  They  include 
in  the  same  group  with  it  A-iiitn,  a  word  which  is  used 
in  Muslim  much  as  in  Christian  prayer.  Of  course  the 
Arabs  hold  that  ^ -?/«« is  Arabic  ;  and  they  say  that  it  means 
respoiide. 

^  It  is  only  in  the  A-dhAn  of  early  morning  that  this 
clause  is  uttered. 

■*  Meaning,  The?-e  is  no  object  of  worsliip  save  Allah.  In 
this,  with  the  companion  clause,  Miihamvtad  [is]  t/ie  apostle 
of  Allah — in  Arabic  nine  words  in  all — consists  the  formula 
by  the  utterance  of  which  the  Muslim  declares  himself  to  be 


such.     The  remark  which  these  words  suggested  to  Gibbon 
is  too  familiar  to  need  quotation. 

^  In  the  days  when  "general  belief"  was  held  to  render 
research  unnecessary,  the  title  "  Mij-a'l-la-kAt  "  was  in- 
terpreted in  its  most  literal  sense  ol  suspended ;  to  correspond 
with  which  the  story  was  fabricated,  that  these  productions 
were  hung  up  by  the  Arabs  on,  or  in,  the  Ka'-ba  at  Mecca. 
But  Arabic  is  not  so  poor  as  to  afford  only  one  meaning  for 
mu-a' l-la-ka.  If  each  poem  bore  this  name  from  the  earliest 
period,  the  root-idea  may  have  been  that  of  preciousness. 
If  the  title  only  originated  when  the  Seven  Pieces  were 
strung  togetlier  by  an  editor,  then  the  word  equally  admits  of 
this  interpretation. 


374 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


ZU-HAIR,  pp.  130  f.n.  4,  145 

f.n.  I. 
La-bid,  pp.  49  f.n.  i,  61  f.n. 

4,  106  fn.  2,  145  fn.  I. 
A'N-TA-RA, pp.  ii2fn.  1,221. 
A'MR,  pp.  42,  104  fn.  I,  117, 

1 30  f  n.  4,  240. 


MUD-DA-I'-YIN. 


MUF-TI 
P.   159. 


MU-HAF-FA 
MU-HA-FIDH 

MU-HAJ-JAL 
MU-HAM-MAD 


Muhammad,  ibn  A'bdi  'llah  , 


Muhammad,  ibn  Su-tj'd 
Muhammad  ibnu  V  Ra-shid 

MU-HAM-MA-RA 


Mu-ha-wit 

MU-HID      . 
MU-JAL-LI 

mu-khal-la-di-ya  . 

mu-khaw-wadh     . 
[Al]  Mu-kai-yar    . 


They  are  far  removed  from  all  conventional  models.  To 
say  that  they  reflect  the  desert  and  its  inhabitants,  as  a 
lake  does  tlie  heavens,  is  inadequate.  Their  authors  made 
history  before  they  made  verses.  Warriors  and  hunters, 
passionate  lovers  and  knight  -  errants,  seem  to  speak  to  us. 
Picture  follows  picture,  like  the  movements  of  the  mirage. 
In  one  line  it  is  the  scud  of  the  wild  ass  or  the  ostrich  which 
we  see  before  us  ;  in  the  next,  a  train  of  tent-ladies  in  their 
camel-litters. 

.  A    spoken     form    (for    nind-da-il'na),   which   is    current    in 
Najd  as  the  title  of  certain  office-bearers,  p.  163  et  f  n.  i. 

\_Surpassing,  primarily  through  youthful  vigour?^  Under 
the  Osmanli,  an  officer,  chosen  from  among  the  U'-la-ma, 
whose  duty  it  is  to  issue  judgments  on  such  points  of  faith 
and  law  as  are  officially  referred  to  him. 

A  fan,  p.  295  f  n.  i. 

[From  the  same  root  as  HA-FIZ,  q.  v.  supra?\  A  title  of 
dignity  among  the  Arabs,  like  our  "  Lord  Keeper,"  p.  17. 

Explained  at  p.  264  f  n.  2. 

\_One  zvho  is  liighly,  or  repeatedly,  praised ?\  For  the/brw  of 
this  name,  v.  NOTE  ON  METHOD  OF  TRANSCRIPTION,  p.  X 
of  prefixes  of  volume.     For  its  antiquity,  v.  p.  107  fn.  2. 

The  Prophet  of  Arabia.  Born  c.  570.  Fled  from  Mecca 
to  Medina,  with  only  one  companion,  April  622,  which  was 
chosen  as  the  epoch  of  the  Muslim  era.  Died  on  Monday, 
8th  June  632.  Pp.  4  et  fn.  i,  17  et  fn.  i,  20  et  fn.  3,  28, 
54  ct  fn.  2,  93  fn.  I,  96  et  fn.  i,  99  fn.  i,  100  fn.  i,  loi,  102 
et  fn.  I,  106  fn.  i,  108,  115  f.ns.  2  and  3,  117,  130,  135  et  fns., 
158,  160,  229,  230  et  fns.,  299. 

The  grandson  of  Amir  Fai-sal  of  Najd,  p.  42. 

A-mir  of  Ja-bal  Sham-rtiar,  pp.  40-48,  122,  145  fn.  i,  211, 

237,251. 

[Redness,  v.  p.  260  f  n.  4.]  The  Persian  port  on  the  Shattu 
'l  A'RAB.  The  town  does  not  contain  more  than  about  2000 
inhabitants.  It  is  a  mile  from  the  river,  on  the  right  bank  of 
an  artificial  canal,  or  "  hafr."  Pp.  82,  259. 

\_Protector?\  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  KhaM-SA,  Table 
p.  235  col.  i. 

[Nonpareil.']     Ut  supra. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  23s  col.  vi. 

\Ado7'ned  with  bracelets,  or  zvith  little  bells.}  The  name  of  a 
strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

"All  four  white,"  p.  264  fn.  2. 

[From  kir,  bitumen  or  mineral  pitch.]  F!  p.  1 11  f  n.  2,  a 
reference  to  the  city  of  "  Mugair."  [Naphtha,  in  Arabic  naft, 
is  still  yielded  by  the  soil  of  Babylonia.  It  supplies  the 
cement    or    plaster    of   aqueducts.      The   round   boat   called 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


375: 


[ Al]  M U-KAI-YAR — continued. 


MUL-LA 


Mu-lOku  'l  ichail  duh-mu- 

HA. 
MU-NAI-JIZ         .  .  .    .       . 

MU-NI-RA  .  .  .  . 


MUN-TA-FIK 


MURR 


[Al]  Mur-ra 
mur-ta-jiz 

MU-SA 


MO-SA,  ibn  Nu-SAIR 


MU-SAI-LI-MA 
P.  30  f.n.  I. 


kuf-fa,  or  "gnf-fa"'^  is  paid  both  inside  and  outside  with  it^ 
as  in  the  days  when  Hasisadra  dwelt  in  the  city  of  Surippak, 
and  weathered  a  seven  days'  deluge  in  a  vessel  thus  rendered 
water-tight.-]  .      . 

\^Ac.cording  to  most  aiithoi'ities,  a  loan-zvord  in  Arabic?^  In 
the  Arabian  desert,  any  one  zvJio  can  read,  pp.  13,  136. 
Generally,  a  scholar;  more  specially,  (i)  a  master  and  ex- 
pounder of  the  Kur-an  and  Sun-na,  and  of  the  body  of 
jurisprudence  which  is  thereon  founded  ;  (2)  a  schoolmaster. 

A  saying  of  the  Arabs  as  to  horses'  colours,  p.  264 
f.n.    I. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235 
col.  iii. 

\Brilliant?\  The  name  of  Muhammad  ibniL  'r  Ra-shid's 
favourite  ^//rt3'-2^  mare,  p.  237.  [We  have  the  word  in  minaret, 
in  Arabic  int-nar,  the  place  on  which  a  light,  ndr  et  nftr,  is 
displayed.] 

The  name  of  a  Bedouin  nation  of  the  Lower  Euphrates,  pp. 
84  f.n.  I,  85,  86,  270,  308. 

\Bitter?\  Doctors  sometimes  give  Arabic  names  to  home- 
made stuffs  ;  but  the  myrrhs  and  the  basil  are  among  the 
herbs  which,  on  reaching  Europe  from  Asia,  have  retained 
their  native  names,  p.  19.  [In  one  of  A'n-tar's  verses,  both 
murr  and  ba-sil  are  used  as  epithets  of  a  bitter  and  terrible 
combatant.] 

The  name  of  a  Bedouin  nation,  pp.  29,  59  f  n.  2,  100. 

The  name  of  one  of  the  Prophet's  chargers,  p.  230  f  n.  2. 

[The  Arabic  transcription  of  the  Hebrew  name  "Mosheh," 
which  is  known  to  us  (through  the  Greek  translation  of  the 
Old  Testament)  as  "  Moses,"  pp.  100  f.n.  i,  106. 

The  "Moorish,"  i.e.  Muslim  Arab,  governor  of  Africa 
through  whose  energy  the  West  Gothic,  or  Visigothic,  king- 
dom in  Spain  was  subverted,  p.  163  f.n.  4.  [Mu-sa's  lieutenant, 
Ta-rik,  was  the  first  to  plant  a  fortress  on  "  The  Rock,"  or 
ja-bal,  which  was  called  after  him,  Ja-bal  Ta-rik,  our 
"Gibraltar."]      , 

[Diminutive  (of  derision)  o^  Muslim,  raedimng  false  Muslim^ 
One  of  the  Ba-nu  Ha-ni-fa,  of  Ya-ma-ma,  in  Najd,  who  set 
up  prophetic  pretensions,  in  opposition  to  Muhammad.  His 
cause  received  support,  and  it  was  not  till  the  Caliphate  of 


^  The  basket-boat  of  El  I'ralc  is  made  of  au-saj,  or  osiers, 
plaited  over  uprights  of  stout  material.  The  section  shows  a 
gentle  curve  at  the  bottom,  and  a  deep  one  above  forming 
the  side.  The  ordinary  kuf-fa  is  about  3)^  feet  in  diameter 
and_2^  feet  deep.  One  man  can  work  it,  by  using  a  paddle 
on  the  two  sides  alternately.  Camels  are  ferried  across 
rivers  in  craft  of  this  description;  and  the  horses  and  mules 
of -the  country  all  know  the  kuf-fa.  The  Persian  poet 
An-va-ri,  in  a  description  of  the_Tigris  at  Baghdad,  says. 


that  a  thousand  sun-shafed  coracles  on  its  S2irface  resembled 
the  stars  in  the  clear  blue  firmament.  Less  poetically,  the 
whirling  kuf-fas  suggest  the  idea  of  huge  black  bird-nests 
which  are  being  washed  down  by  the  current. 

^  K  in  Professor  Huxley's  Essay  upon  some  Controverted 
Subjects,  pp.  583-625,  a  critical  examination  of  "Hasisadra's 
Adventure,"  as  set  forth  in  certain  recently  obtained  Assyrian 
tablets. 


376 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


[Al]  Mu-sal-li 
Muscat  . 


MU-SHAI-TIB     . 

MU-SIN-NA 

MUS-LIM   .... 

[A'rabu  'l]  Mus-ta'-ri-ba 


Mut-a'b 


Mu-ta-wal-lI 
Mu-wA-1-ja 

MU-WAI-NI' 

Mu'-WAj  Ham-mAd 


MU-WAR-RAD 
MU'-YIL      . 


Abu  Bakr  that,  after  the  defeat  and  death  of  the  pretender 
in  a  sanguinary  battle,  Is-lam  was  freed  from  this  danger. 

F.  p.  131  f.n.  3. 

The  Gibraltar  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  capital  of  Oman, 
pp.  20,  252  et  f.n.  I.  [In  the  Arabian  ballad  literature, 
mas-kat  means,  tJie  place  zvhere  the  sandy  ridge  subsides 
into  the  plain.] 

\A  pahn-h'ancJi  dratvn  fortli  from  its  skin.'\  The  .name  of 
a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  v.  [An  Arab 
says  that  the  name,  as  applied  to  a  courser,  means,  long,  and 
level,  and  light  of  flesh.] 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235 
col.  i. 

A  follower  of  the  DiNU  'L  Is-lam.  Passim,  et  v.  p.  loi 
f.n.  2.  [The  name  Mus-lim  is  probably  as  old  as  its  Semitic 
root  slm.  It  occurs  in  the  Talmud,  where  it  is  held  to  mean 
a  righteoiLS  man?[ 

{Naturalised  Arabs?[  According  to  the  Arab  chroniclers, 
immigrants  who  entered  Arabia,  at  a  less  remote  period  than 
the  "  Himyarite  "  Arabs,  pp.  98,  gg  et  f  n.  i,  100,  117,  118,  120. 

\_Mus-ta'-ri-ba  appears  in  Spanish  as  "  Mozaribe."  The 
Arab  conquerors  of  Spain  thus  designated  the  Christian  com- 
munities which  they  tolerated  in  Cordova,  Seville,  Toledo, 
and  other  cities.] 

\^0]te  zvhose  arm,  or  leg,  has  been  broken,  and  imperfectly 
reset.l  The  name  of  a  prince  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  p.  40 
f.n.   I. 

One  who  administers  trusts  for  a  religious  purpose,  p.  153 
f.n.   I. 

The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Sba'  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

{Repelling^      Ut  supra. 

[Mu'-waj,  inclining  noiv  to  this  side  and  noiv  to  that,  in 
galloping ;  Ham-mad,  a  man's  name.]  The  name  of  a  strain 
in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses,  p.  225  et  f.n.  2,  and  in 
Table  p.  263. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 


NA-Bt 


[An]  Na-bi-gha 
P.  227  fn.  4. 


N 


A  "  Prophet,"  in  the  sense  described  at  p.  4  f.n.  i.  [Every 
RA-sCjl  or  messenger  is  a  "  na-bi  " ;  but  every  "  na-bi  "  is  not 
a  "  ra-siel."] 

[Said  to  mean  ojie  who,  not  having  been  born  a  poet,  becomes 
one.]  Epithet  serving  for  name  of  Zi-yad,  of  the  tribe  Dhub- 
yan,  a  distinguished  Arabian  poet,  whose  fame  was  estab- 
lished in  the  half-century  before  Muhammad. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


i77 


Naf-ha-tu'l  Ya-man 

Naga  [for  na-kd\ 
NA-I'J 

Na-JAF      . 

Najd 


Naj-ma-tu  's  subh 
Na-kib     . 

Na'l 


Na'man 
Nard 


Na-sai-yir 

NA-SfB        . 
NA-Si-BfN 


Nau-fa-lI 


NA-tr'R      . 

Naw-wak 

[  Viclg.  Naw-wag.] 
Ni-Ll 

NiS-BA 
Nl-ZAR 
NU-FtJDH 


\_Odo!ir  or  breatli  of  Ycmeii.l  The  title  of  an  Arabic  tale- 
book,  a  piece  from  which  is  translated,  pp.  215,  216. 

The  cow-camel,  p.  56. 

\_A  w/tite  caiitcl.']  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA, 
Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

A  town  of  El  I'rik,  the  chief  feature  of  which  is  the 
mausoleum  of  A'li,  p.  44. 

l^A  plateaiLl\  The  well-known  name  of  the  elevated  central 
portion  of  the  Arabian  peninsula,  pp.  8,  9,  16,  19,  21,  22,  23, 
25-64  passim,  121,  124,  125,  126,  127  f.n.  2,  135,  136,  145 
fn.  I,  153,  164,  175,  205,  210,  211,  212,  220,  236,  244,  245, 
260,  293,  300,  315.     [Of  or  belonging  to  Najd  is  "  Naj-di."] 

{^Morniiig  sta!-.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA, 
Table  p.  235  col.  ii. 

[One  ivJio  searches  into?[  P.  \%l  et  f.n.  i.  V.  art.  A'bdu  'L 
Ka-DIR,  supra. 

The  ancient  Semitic  sandal,  described  and  illustrated  p. 
97  f.n.  4.  In  Persia,  Afghanistan,  and  India,  na'l  (p.  179) 
now  generally  means  a  horse-shoe,  v.  illustration  p.  180. 

A  proper  name,  p.  4  et  f.n.  3. 

[In  Baghdad,  tA-li,  or  long.']  Backgammon,  trick-track,  or 
tables,  p.  54  f.n.  2.  \_Nai-d  is  considered  Persian.  In  Bagh- 
dad the  Persians  call  dice  zdr ;  and  the  Arabs,  _/z/j,  "pl.fn-sfis^ 

[Aiding.']  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Ru-wa-la  Aeniza, 
Table  p.  121. 

A  man's  lot  or  portion,  p.  1 30. 

In  the  Assyrian,  early  Armenian,  Roman,  Parthian,  and 
later  periods,  Na-si-bin,  in  the  north  of  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  was 
an  important  military  and  commercial  station.  The  resi- 
dences of  emperors,  viceroys,  and  generals,  adorned  it.  The 
name  may  either  imply  the  idea  of  military  posts,  or  of 
columned  edifices  and  palaces.  At  the  present  day,  ruins,  in 
which  are  a  hamlet,  form  its  principal  features,  pp.  6'^,  74. 

[Nau-fal,  in  its  commonest  use,  is  the  name  of  a  certain 
wild  flower  ;  and  it  is  also  a  favourite  proper  name  among 
the  Arabs.]  A  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA  is  called  Nau-fa-lt, 
Table  p.  235   col.  i. 

The  large  vertical  water-wheel,  which  is  described  p.  81 
f.n.  2. 

[Same  as  dha-Ud,  q.  v.  p.  61  f.n.  3.]  The  name  of  a  strain 
in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses.  Table  p.  263. 

[Lit.,  relationship^  Used  by  the  Bedouin  in  the  sense  of  a 
breed  of  horses  or  other  animals,  p.  236. 

According  to  the  Arab  genealogists,  a  patriarch  of  the 
"  Ishmaelite  "  Arabs,  p.  99. 

A  term  of  Arabian  physical  geography,  pp.  34-38,  97,  126, 
269. 

3  B 


378 

NUK-RA 
NtJH 

Nu-si 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 

Any  depressed  tract.     A  common  name  for  oases.     P.  99 
f.n.  4. 

"Noah,"  p.  100  f.n.  i. 

A  natural  grass  of  Najd,  pp.  51,  82,  269. 


Ojian 


Ophir 

Pp.  12  fn.  3,  27. 


Ottoman         .        .        .        . 
For    page    references    v.    In- 
dex ii. 


o 

[In  Arabic,  U'-indn,  the  root-idea  in  which  is  abiding!] 
The  name  of  the  Arabian  kingdom,  the  capital  of  which  is 
Muscat,  pp.  25,  32,  253. 

In  one  treatise,  not  older  than  1848,  80  pages  are  occupied 
with  the  different  theories  which  have  been  propounded  re- 
specting the  site  of  Ophir.  A  later  authority  thus,  in  our 
opinion,  conclusively  settles  the  point : — 

"It  is  quite  plain  from  Gen.  x.  29,  that  Ophir  belonged  to 
Southern  Arabia,  from  which  the  Phoenicians  still  derived  gold  and 
precious  stones  in  the  time  of  Ezekiel  (xxvii.  22).  All  attempts  to 
place  Ophir  in  India,  or  on  the  east  coast  of  Africa  (Sofala),  are  at 
variance  with  Gen.  x.  It  is  true  that  Indian  products  were  also 
brought  to  Solomon  (i  Kings  x.  22);  but  these  are  not  said  to  have 
come  from  Ophir,  and  therefore  we  cannot  even  be  sure  that  Ophir 
was  the  emporium  where  the  Indian  trade  and  the  Western  met,  as 
they  did  in  Southern  Arabia  in  later  times."  ^ 

Niebuhr,  in  Description  de  I'Arabe,  arrives  at  the  conclusion 
that  Ophir  probably  was  situated  somewhere  between  Aden 
and  Dha-far.  In  Baron  von  Brede's  learned  paper  in  the 
Journal  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  vol.  xiv.  p.  no, 
the  name  Ophir  is  interpreted  red ;  and  it  is  also  stated  that 
certain  tribes  of  Hadh-ra-maut  call  themselves  men  of  the  red 
country,  and  the  Red  Sea,  Bahru  7  opJiir.  The  fact  that 
the  name  "  Ophir "  has  for  its  first  letter  a  different  symbol 
in  the  Biblical  and  in  Arabic  writings  respectively,  does  not 
necessarily  preclude  the  explanation  of  it  from  the  latter 
language,  in  which  names  derived  from  colour  are  extremely 
prevalent.  The  Arabs  of  the  desert  call  the  wild  pig  ifr, 
probably  because  his  colour  resembles  that  of  the  ground. 
The  JINN  have  for  one  of  their  designations  i'f-rit.  La-bid 
bestows  on  the  calf  of  a  wild  cow  which  a  lion  had  seized, 
the  epithet  mtt-a'f-far,  meaning  either  The  dust-coloured,  or 
The  one  that  has  been  rolled  in  the  dust.  The  only  per- 
manent settlement  between  Mosul  and  Sinjar  is  Tall 
a'-FAR — i.e.,  the  hill  of  a  reddish  colour. 

The  English  form  of  the  descriptive  which  the  Arabs  write 
"  U'th-ma-ni,"  and  the  Turks,  "  Osmanli "  ;  meaning  anything 
belonging  to  the  race  or  dynasty  of  U'th-mAn,  or  "  Osman," 
the   founder  of  the   present  "  Turkish "  empire. 


'  Ency.  Brit.,  vol.  xvii.  p.  780. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX   AND   SUPPLEMENT.  379 


PA-LAN The  Persian  pack-saddle,  p.  318  f.n.  3. 

Pa-sha,     Ba-sha  ;     PAd-sha,         An  Aryan  word.    The  Constantinople  Government  bestows 
BAd-sha.  it  as  a  title,  like  our  "  Lord."     Under  the  Muslim  rulers  of 

India,  the  Emperor  of  Delhi  was  the  "  Padsha"  ;  while  each 

great  feudatory  of  the  empire  was  styled  a  "  Naw-wab,"  or 

Viceroy.  Pp.  44.  I34-  146,  I53- 

PUSHT  I  KtTH  .  .  [In  Persian,  Back  of  the  mountain?^     The  mountains  which 

P.  149  fn  I.  separate   "  Lur-istan  "   from  Asiatic  Turkey   are   collectively 

known  by  this  name.     Numerous  rich  valleys,  and  some  of 
the  best  pasture-grounds  in  Persia,  here  present  themselves. 
A  semi-nomad   people,  of  the   Lur,  or   Luri,  branch   of  the 
old  Iranian  stock  called  Fai-Ii,  maintain  their  independence 
within  the  limits  of  Pusht  i  Kuh.     A  native  chief,  on  whom 
the  Shah  of  Persia  confers  the  title  of  Wall,  exercises  patri- 
archal authority  over  them.     Nominally,  they  are  Muslim  of 
the  Shi  a'  ;   but  in  religion  as  in  other  respects  they   more 
resemble   the   pagan    Kurds   than    the    Persians.      A  kft-la, 
or  booth,  woven  of  leafy  branches,  is  preferred   by  them  to 
the  tent,  and  every  ki'c-la  is  defended  by  a  separate  inclosure 
of  thorny  fencing.     In  summer  they  live  in  the  mountains, 
and   in   winter    in   the   plains.      These    Hnes    are   written    at 
Dih-ba-la,   or   High-town,   the   summer-quarters    of   Hu-sain 
Ku-li  Khan,  chief  of  the  Lurs.      With  the  aid  of  an  enter- 
prising Swiss  merchant,  who  in  his  last  journey  fell  from  his 
horse  and  was  killed,  a  demesne  and  palace  recalling  some 
of  Marco  Polo's  descriptions  have  uprisen  at  Dih-ba-la ;  but 
this  modern  "  old  man  of  the  mountain  "  prefers  to  occupy  a 
booth  in  the  open,  where  all  his  clan  and  progeny  can  see 
him.     His  hospitality  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired  ;  and  yet 
it  is  not  without  a  peculiar  feeling  that  one  receives  the  daily 
tray  of  fruit  or  game,  by  the  hands  of  the  herculean  Luri 
whose   hereditary   functions   include  that  of  hewing  off  the 
head  of  any  one  who  has  flinched  in  the  foray,  or  otherwise 
incurred  the  Wall's  anger.     A  figurative  rather  than  positive 
regiment  of  about  200  ragged  musketeers  is  hutted  and  ra- 
tioned at  Dih-ba-la.     The  older  men  relate  that  they  saw  the 
English  gunboats  in  vain  bombard  Mu-ham-ma-ra  in  1857; 
"  in  vain,"  seeing  that  although  our  countrymen  took  the  town 
they  did  not  retain  it !     The  only  trophy  which  Pusht  i  Kuh 
has  yielded  to  us  is  a  head  of  the  Buz  KU-HI,  or  mountain- 
goat  of  Persia — the  Ba-DA-NA  of  Central  Arabia,  and  Stein- 
boc  (Capra  ibex)  of  Europe.     In  the  Luri  mountains  it  is  not 
uncommon  to  see  the  horns  of  these  wary  creatures  rising 
against  the  sky-line,  at  elevations  to  which  only  a  chamois- 
hunter  could  climb  ;  but  the  solitary  males  descend  at  night 


3  So 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


PUSHT  I  l\.^n—-contmncd. 


to  easier  regions.  Hu-sain  Ku-li  Khan's  country  is  famed 
for  its  mules.  Tlie  only  really  first-class  riding-mule  that  we 
have  ever  ridden  is  one  which  belongs  to  his  principal  hench- 
man, but  it  is  the  pick  of  many  hundreds.  The  Luri  chief 
trusts  to  Arabian  mares  and  Martini-Henrys  in  his  raids 
on  the  Ba-nu  Lam  and  other  Arab  flock-masters.  He  cap- 
tures the  mares  of  the  Arabs  in  foray,  and  keeps  his  followers 
well  mounted  by  means  of  buying,  taking,  and  breeding.  Al- 
most every  winter  he  and  a  merchant  of  Kirman-shah  despatch 
in  partnership  a  number  of  horses  to  the  Bombay  market. 


R 


Rab-dan 

Ra-bi 

Ra-dhi 

Ra-dif 


RAH-HA-Lt-YA 


Rah-man 


Rak-ka    . 


Ra-ma-dhan    .        .        .        . 
[In  Turkey,  Persia,  and  In- 
dia, "  Ramzan."] 


Ra-MAK    . 

RAs  . 

Ra-sa-lin 

Ra-san     . 
Ra-sh1d   . 

Rash-ma  . 

RA-StfL      . 


[Ash-colotired,  whence,  the  ostrich.]  The  name  of  a  strain 
in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

Spring,  p.  50  f.n.  2. 

\^One  who  is  satisfied^     A  guide's  name,  p.  38. 

One  who  rides  behind  another,  on  the  back  of  the  same 
beast,  pp.  36  f.n.  3,  61.  [In  the  Ottoman  service,  the  "Re- 
serves "  are  termed  the  "  Ra-dif."] 

\Saddling  of  camels?^  The  name  of  a  palm  oasis,  and 
ancient  settlement,  in  the  desert  west  of  Kar-ba-la,  p.  42. 
The  inhabitants  occupy  two  townships,  which  are  at  some 
distance  apart.  Apparently  they  cultivate  little  else  than 
dates,  with,  under  the  palm-trees,  lucerne. 

Of  which  Ra-HIM  is  a  synonymous  form,  meaning  com- 
passionate, as  a  part  of  men's  names,  p.  107  et  fn.  i. 

An  ancient  settlement  [Alexander's  Nicephorium]  on  the 
Euphrates,  in  N.  Al  Jazira,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Bi-likh,  p.  63. 

{Vehemence  of  heat?\  The  ninth  lunar  month  in  the  Muslim 
calendar,  which  is  set  apart  for  fasting,  p.  160  et  L-n.  i.  [In 
the  year  in  which  the  pagan  Arabs  re-named  their  months, 
the  month  which  received  this  name  chanced  to  fall  in  the 
season  of  heat.] 

Some  Bedouin  nations  use  this  word  as  a  synonym  of 
Fa-RAS,  q.  V.  P.  238  fn.  2. 

A  town  in  Najd,  p.  32  fn.  i. 

[Root-idea,  rival}y^^  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Sba' 
Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

V.  illustration,  p.  140.  In  the  sense  of  a  "strain"  of  horses, 
p.  236. 

[Root-idea,  straightness^  An  epithet  much  used  in  names 
and  titles  among  the  Arabs.  "  Ha-runu  'r  Ra-shid,"  or  Aaron 
the  Just  (or  Orthodox),  is  an  example,  p.  98. 

[A  7?ia7-k,  or  impression,  e.g.  of  a  seal  or  chain.]  The  Bedouin 
riding-halter,  described  and  illustrated,  p.  140,  et  v.  p.  313. 

[Root-idea,  sending:]  An  apostle.  [  V.  art.  Na-bi,  supra.] 
P.  4  fn.  I. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


381 


Rasu  'l  a'in  . 

Rasu  'l  Fi-da-wI 

Rasu  'l  hadd 

Rau-A'     . 
Ra-wi-a   . 


Raz-za-za        .        .        .        . 
[Ar]  Rt-adh   .        .        .        . 
[PI.  of  Rau-dha.] 

Rl-JA-jiL  .  .  .  .  . 

Rl-KAB 

[Common  pronunciation,  ri- 
chdb.'\ 


RiKHL 

RiM  . 


Rl-SHAN    . 
RUBB 

[Ar]  Rub-u'  'l  KHA-Li 

RU-DAN     . 
RlJM 


\Hcad  of  the  spring.']  In  N.W.  Al  Ja-ZI-RA,  the  sources 
of  the  Khci-bur  river  [p.  75],  where  long  ago  the  city  of 
Ra-si-na  flourished. 

\Leader  of  tJie  "enfants  perdus,"  v.  in  art.  AlamOt,  supra?\ 
The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i., 
et  1^.  213  fn.  I. 

\Head  or  point  of  tlie  boundary?^  The  extreme  eastern 
shoulder  of  the  Arabian  peninsula  at  the  entrance  of  the 
Gulf  of  Oman,  p.  26. 

[Fem.  of  ar-iva\  strong-hearted.']  The  name  of  a  strain  in 
Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

[The pouring  out  of  tvater.]  The  primitive  Arabs  called  the 
maker  and  reciter  of  verses  a  rd-zui-a,  precisely  as  the  orator 
is  sometimes  called  among  us  a"spouter."     P.  234. 

A  small  oasis  in  Sha-mi-ya,  S.W.  of  Kar-BA-LA,  p.  83. 

l^The  ivatered  lands  or gardejis.]  The  name  of  the  second 
Wahabite  capital  of  Najd,  pp.  32  fn.  i,  36,  42,  44,  45,  58,  164, 
250,  251. 

[PI.  of  a  plural:  singular,  i-aful=vir^  "Manly  men," 
pp.42,  211. 

A  stirrup,  v.  illustration,  p.  148.  Rikdb  means,  as  does 
mar-kab  [although  the  latter  is  much  specialised  in  the  sense 
of  a  ship],  that  on  whicli  one  rides.,  particularly  camels.  The 
desert  Arab,  like  the  ancient  Grecian  hero,  trusts  to  his 
agility,  with  or  without  the  aid  of  his  spear-shaft,  in  mounting 
and  dismounting.  It  is  not  known  when  the  Arabs  first 
saw  a  stirrup  ;  but  from  their  naming  it  rikdb  they  would 
appear  to  regard  it  as  a  means  of  mounting.  The  ordinary 
I'raki  horseman  seems  to  consider  that  the  main  use  of  his 
stirrups  is  to  enable  him  to  double  up  his  legs  half-way  to 
his  mouth,  and  by  putting  himself  to  bed  as  it  were  on  his 
horse,  the  sooner  give  him  a  sore  back. 

A  ewe-lamb,  p.  no. 

The  name  of  an  antelope,  the  identification  of  which  is 
disputed,  v.  p.  14S  fn.  i.  [To  support  the  suggestion  that 
the  "  rim  "  of  Arab  poetry  is  cervine,  not  bovine,  a  verse  of 
Im-ra-u  '1  Kais  might  be  quoted,  in  which  it  is  said  that  the 
ground,  in  a  certain  favourite  spot,  owing  to  the  droppings  of 
the  a-rdm  [plural  of  ;-/;«],  appeared  to  be  covered  zuith  black 
pepper  beriHes.] 

\_Fcathered?\  The  name,  in  the  sense  of  winged  or  volant, 
of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

Fruit-juice,  inspissated,  p.  234  ct  fn.  i. 

V.  pp.  25,  26. 

\E,asy-paced?^  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA, 
Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  Arabs  thus  pronounce  "  Rome,"  p.  44.  The  name 
Rome  has  been  differently  applied  by  them  at  different 
periods.     Sometimes  they  have  understood  by  it  Europe  at 


382 

RtJM — contimi  cd. 


RUMH 

RUS-TAM 


RU-WA-LA 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 

large.  Another  of  its  meanings  has  been  "  all  the  lands  of 
the  Romans " ;  and  another,  the  Byzantine  empire.  In  our 
day  they  mean  by  "Rum"  the  Osmanli  empire.  In  the 
Orthodox  Greek  Church,  "  New  Rome "  still  lingers  as  the 
official  designation  of  Constantinople,  which  the  Turks  call 
Istamboul  or  Stamboul. 

The  long  Bedouin  spear,  p.  75. 

The  son  of  Zal,  a  Goliath  of  the  old  Iranian  kingdom, 
whom  the  Persian  Homer  Fir-du-si  chose  as  the  hero  of  his 
great  national  epic,  the  Shah  NA-MAH,  or  Book  of  Kings, 
p.  283. 

[Root-idea  said  to  be  saHva?[  Tlie  name  of  a  great  divis. 
of  the  Aeniza,  Table  pp.  59,  61  fn.  i,  68,  121,  210. 


Sa-a'd 
Sa-BA 


Murder  of  ■ 


-,  a  grandson  of  Amir  Fai-sal  of  Najd,  p.  42. 
The  inscriptions  which  have  been  discovered  in  south- 
western Arabia  throw  new  light  on  the  reference  in  Gen.  x. 
29  to  a  people  whose  name  was  Sa-ba  ("  Sheba ").  Pp.  27, 
28,  gj,  99  fn.  3.  [Under  the  interpretation  that  sa-bd 
means  to  make  a  trading  journey,  it  is  conjectured  that  at 
the  period  referred  to  in  Genesis  the  Sabaeans  ^  occupied  a 


1  It  is  mentioned  in  the  text,  p.  28  f.n.  2,  that  the 
"Sabfeans,"  or  ancient  Yemenites,  aie  no  longer  confused 
with  the  sect  of  the  "  Sa-bi-tVna. "  Tlie  former  name  is 
now  but  a  term  of  history.  The  latter  belongs  to  certain 
descendants  of  the  ancient  Semite  population  of  Chaldea 
who  still  exist  as  a  small  community  of  artisans  and  cul- 
tivators in  lower  Babylonia.  The  first  time  that  we  en- 
tered El  I'rak,  a  deputation  of  these  people  came  on  board 
the  steamer  at  Bussorah,  bearing  a  petition  which  they  re- 
quested us  to  forward  to  England.  The  honest  mariner  in 
command  of  the  vessel  was  one  of  those  who  keep  varied 
stores  of  information  on  Eastern  topics  for  the  benefit  of  trav- 
ellers. The  account  which  he  gave  of  the  "  Sabians  "  was, 
that  they  were  "  Christians  of  St  John,"  who  built  no 
churches,  married  only  one  wife,  and  considered  themselves 
under  the  protection  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  It 
afterwards  appeared,  from  a  considerable  literature  which 
e.xists  on  this  subject  [v.  '  Edinburgh  Review,'  July  1880),  that 
most  of  these  statements  were  erroneous.  The  question  of 
whether  the  "  Sa-bi-u-na  "  possess  churches  depends  on  what 
is  understood  by  a  church.  They  erect  edifices  which  they 
consecrate  with  a  singular  ritual ;  but  only  priestly  persons 
may  enter  them,  and  the  congregation  responds  from  out- 
side. They  are  so  far  from  being  Christians,  that  both 
Judaism  and  Christianity  are  abhorrent  to  them.  All  the 
Biblical  personages,  from  Adam  to  John  and  Jesus,  appear 
as  false  prophets  in  their  theology  or  mythology.  Their 
lustral  or  ablutionary  ceremonies  (whence  "Sabian,"  from 
sd-it,  in  Syria  a  ■washer)  tend  to  group  them  with  those  dis- 
ciples of  John,  or  "Yah-ya,"  who  held  aloof  from  Chris- 
tianity ;  but  that  does  not  justify  us  in  connecting  them  with 
"John  the  Baptist"  of  our  Gospels.     Whether  they  shall 


marry  one  wife,  or  several,  is  regulated  by  their  circum- 
stances. Al  Kur-An  commends  them  to  toleration  under 
the  name  of  Sd-lii-il-na  (Su-ra  v.)  More  properly  they  are 
"  Mandfeans,"  lit.  Gnostics.  In  truth  theirs  is  an  exceedingly 
ancient  religion,  in  the  light  of  which  nearly  all  other  well- 
developed  religions  may  profitably  be  studied.  .(Eons,  or 
emanations,  from  an  origin  of  all  things,  compose  the  ground- 
work ;  and  the  greatest  figure  in  the  system  of  the  Mandteans, 
from  whom  they  take  their  name,  is  the  ''  Messenger  of  Life," 
Manda  d'  hayye,  who  is  also  called  the  "primal  man." 
Even  such  scholarship  as  Dr  Noldeke's  confesses  itself 
unable  to  fathom  the  profundities  which  are  contained  in  the 
Scriptures  of  the  Manda^ans.  Their  "  priests  "  are  more  of 
magic-men,  devil-exorcisers,  and  astrologers,  than  teachers. 
When  a  house  is  being  designed,  a  priest  is  fetched  to  mark 
out  the  lines,  and  fix  the  position  of  the  doors.  In  sickness 
the  sovereign  medicine  is  a  priest's  amulet.  Apparently, 
however,  the  "  holy  men  "  themselves  prefer  natural  to  divine 
assistance.  A  priest  of  the  Sabians  has  just  come  to  Baghdad 
in  a  Lynch's  steamer,  to  ask  the  surgeon  of  the  British  Con- 
sulate to  cure  him  of  a  sore  leg.  Attempts  to  obtain  from 
this  old  man  an  account  of  his  sect's  theology  are  always  frits- 
trated  by  his  bringing  the  conversation  round  to  the  subject 
of  a  possible  subsidy  from  Lambeth.  He  wears  blue  stones 
as  ornaments.  This  may  refer  to  the  Mandtean  conception 
that  a  turquoise  mountain  separates  earth  from  paradise.  But 
the  Turks  also,  and  the  Sikhs  of  India,  esteem  the  blue  col- 
our ;  and  the  Sin-jar  Ya-zI-dis  {q.  v.  infra),  while  attracted  by 
blue  objects,  think  blue  clothes  too  sacred  to  be  worn.  The 
old  man  now  referred  to  stoutly  testifies  against  celibacy.  He 
also  repudiates  fasting  ;  but,  like  his  Muslim  neighbours,  has 
obligatory  prayers,  and  kills  meat  in  the  name  of  the  Divine. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


383 


Sa-ba — continued. 


SA-BAT 

Sab-bah 


Sab-ba-ha-ka    'llah    bi    'l 

Khair. 
Sa-bil 


[As]  Sa-bik 
Sab-kha  . 
Sab-ta 


Sab-za  (Persian) 
Sa'-dan    . 


Sa'-d1 

[Another  form  of  Su-u'd,  q.  v., 
and  of  many  other  deriva- 
tives.] 


Sa-dir 
Sa-fa-ri  . 
Sa-GAR  [for  sakr] 
Sa-hib 


Sah-ra 


subordinate  position  in  Yemen,  and  did  not  rise  to  promi- 
nence till  later.  Owing  to  the  great  place  which  the  heavenly 
bodies  held  in  the  religion  of  ancient  Yemen,  Sabaeanism  is 
often  used  as  another  name  for  astral  worship.] 

The  "summer-house"  of  the  desert  Arabs,  p.  81. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi.  The  name  of  one  of  the  Prophet  Muhammad's 
chargers,  p.  230  f  n.  2. 

The  "  Good  morning"  of  the  Arabs,  p.  159  fn.  4. 

The  little  bowl  of  clay,  or  wood,  or  bone,  in  which  the 
Arab  smokes  tobacco,  p.  164  fn.  3.  To  make  the  "chi-buk" 
of  the  Turks  and  Turco-Arabs,  an  ornamented  wooden  stem, 
at  least  a  yard  long,  which  is  called  a  sha-tub  (lit.  paliii- 
brancJi)  is  fitted  to  the  sa-bil.  In  the  "  kal-li-an,"  or  "  nar-jil  " 
{coca-HJit),  of  the  Shah's  dominions,  the  smoke  passes  through 
water.  The  Persian  "  water-pipe  "  is  much  relished  in  Turkey 
also,  where  its  name  is  modified  into  "  nargila." 

F.  p.  131  fn.  3. 

Marshy  land,  which  yields  salt,  p.  82. 

The  leather  plaits  which  the  Bedouin  of  both  sexes  bind 
round  the  naked  loins,  p.  140.  [Other  names  are  brim  ;  and 
in  classic  Najd,  hag-gu,  for  ha-ku,  from  a  word  for  the  loins.] 

One  of  the  colours  of  Arabian  horses,  Table  p.  263,  col.  of 
remarks. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  sug- 
gested by  the  desert  shrub,  sa'-ddn,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

This  name  was  assumed  in  honour  of  a  royal  patron,  by 
one  who  was  destined  to  make  it  shine  for  ever  with  no 
borrowed  lustre,  Mu-SHAR-RAFU  'D  DIN,  the  son  of  Mus-Ll-HU 
'd  din,  of  Shi-raz.  The  great  poet-teacher  of  the  Eastern 
world  was  born  at  Shi-raz,  about  A.D.  11 84.  He  was  a 
travelling,  not  a  sedentary,  student.  His  schools  included  El 
I'rak  and  Central  Asia,  Syria  and  India,  Yemen  and  Abys- 
sinia. In  his  old  age  he  returned  to  his  native  Persia,  to 
meditate  on  all  that  he  had  seen,  and  learned,  and  written  ; 
and  it  was  not  till  his  iioth  lunar  year  that  death  sum- 
moned him  away  from  his  pleasant  rose-gardens  in  Shi-raz. 
V.  quotations  or  translations  from  his  works,  pp.  12,  45,  114 
fn.  I,  133,  134  fn.  I,  191,  276,  291,  305. 

The  name  of  a  province  of  Najd,  pp.  32  fn.  i,  43. 

A  season  of  the  year,  p.  50  f  n.  2. 

A  hunting  hawk,  or  falcon,  p.  152  ^/  fn.  2. 

[Primarily  a  companion,  whence  a  protector,  also  possessor, 
e.g.  of  a  quality.]  In  India,  "Sa-hib"  is  used  as  a  title  of 
respect,  like  "  Beg"  in  Turkey,  p.  194. 

The  Arabic  word  which  in  our  maps  appears  as  "  Sahara," 
or  desert,  pp.  18,  60. 


384 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Sai-yid     . 
Pp.  281,  301. 


Sakar      .        .        .        . 
Pp.  So  et  f.n.  2,  54  f.n.  i. 


Sake 
Sak-la-wi 


Sak-la-wi-ya  . 

[As]  Sa-la-tin 

[PI.  of  Stil-tdn?[ 
Sal-ga 
Sa-l1-la  . 
Sal-ma     . 


SA-Ltr-Kl  . 


Sa-mar-ra 

Sa-ma-wa 
Sam-han . 


Lord,  or  Master,  especially  applied  to  the  Prophet  Muham- 
mad. Those  of  the  race  of  Muhammad,  through  Husain's 
son  Zainu  '1  a'-bi-din,  the  sole  male  survivor  of  the  slaughter 
at  Kar-ba-la,  are  distinguished  in  Arabia  by  the  title  of 
"  Sai-yid,"  or  collectively,  "  Sa-dat."  In  India,  "  Sai-yid  " 
is  merely  a  component  part  of  the  name  of  those  who  bear  it. 

The  primary  idea  contained  in  this  word  is  inebriation,  and 
it  occurs  in  Al  Kur-AN  in  the  generic  sense  of  ivine.  [In 
numerous  languages  the  same  word  signifies  those  saccharine 
principles  in  vegetable  and  animal  juices,  from  which  intoxi- 
cating beverages  are  produced  by  spontaneous  fermentation.] 

The  name  of  one  of  the  Prophet  Muhammad's  chargers,  p. 
230  f  n.  2. 

The  name  (it  is  said  with  the  meaning  of  long,  ox  great,  of 
flank)  of  one  of  the  primary  divisions  of  Al  Kham-SA,  Table 
p.  235  col.  ii.  It  is  a  matter  of  tradition  among  the  desert  Arabs 
that  long  ago  a  Shekh  named  Jid-ran  {v.  art.  Jid-ra-nI,  supra) 
possessed  three  famous  mares.  One  of  the  trio,  that  called 
after  him  is  held  to  have  transmitted  her  blood  down  to  our 
day.  The  second  was  given,  or  bequeathed,  to  Jid-ran's 
slave  ;  and  she  and  her  descendants  are  now  spoken  of  as  the 
Sak-la-wi-ya  'l  a'bd  {v.  Table  p.  235  col.  ii.),  or  "Saklawi- 
ya  of  the  slave."  The  third  mare  suffered  a  misalliance,  and 
her  owner  would  have  cut  her  throat,  had  not  his  brother 
U-bair  begged  her  from  him,  and  obtained  her,  under  the 
stipulation  that  her  descendants  should  be  called  by  the  name 
of  U-bair,  not  by  that  of  Jid-ran. 

A  revenue  outpost  of  the  Baghdad  Government,  on  the  east 
bank  of  the  Euphrates,  three  days  west  of  Baghdad,  p.  84  fn.  i. 

\^The  masterfnl?^  The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Aeniza, 
Table  p.  121. 

The  Aeniza  group  of  the ,  p.  149. 

The  name  of  a  part  of  Najd,  p.  32  f  n.  i. 

[From  the  same  root  as  Is-LAM,  q.  v?\  A  "long  bluish 
chain"  of  N.  Central  Arabia,  which  is  part  of  the  Ta-i,  or 
Sham-mar,  mountains,  p.  39. 

The  name  of  a  strain  under  Mi'-ni-k1,  in  the  stock  of 
Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi.  [Either  the  progeny  of  a 
mare  which  resembled  the  Arab  slA-gi,  or  greyhound  ;  or  the 
progeny  of  a  mare  belonging  to  a  man  who  was  so  character- 
ised, or  named.] 

A  tomb  hamlet,  and  place  of  Shi-ite  pilgrimage  on  the  site 
of  a  historic  city,  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Tigris,  below  Tak- 
rit,  p.  78  f  n.  3. 

A  small  permanent  settlement  of  the  Lower  Euphrates 
marsh-land,  pp.  84  fn.  i,  85. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


385 


San-a' 


Sa-nam 

Sa-rab 
Sard-Ab 


Sard-garm 

Sa-ri 

Sarj 

Sar-ra-e  . 
Sa-wa-kin 


Sa-wa-ni  . 

[PI.  of  Sd-ni-a. 
Sa-yih 

Sba'  . 


Sbai-l!     . 
SfCtk 


Sha-ba-ka 
Sha'-ban  . 
"  Shah-rukh  " 


[Root-idea,  manufacturing,  or  constructing?^  The  capital  of 
Yemen,  and  the  centre  of  a  large  district  which  takes  its 
name  from  the  city,  pp.  28,  97. 

The  highest  part,  or  hump,  of  the  camel's  back,  p.  294 
f.n.   I. 

{^Rtinning?\     The  mirage,^  p.  81  (?^  f.n.  5. 
[Persian.]     The  depressed,  but  not  subterranean,  apartment 
or  cellar  in  which  they  spend  the  hot  hours  of  the  day  in  El 
Prak  and  other  countries,  p.  Si. 

A  term  of  the  Indians  for  a  certain  phase  of  climate,  p. 
315   f.n.  2. 

\Going  along,  or  jotirneying,  especially  by  night?]  The  name 
of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Fid-a'n  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

[By  .some  said  to  be  Persian.]  A  saddle,  pp.  144  fn.  i,  147 
with  illustration. 

The  name  of  a  horde  of  El  Prak,  p.  84  fn.  i. 
[PI.  of  sd-kin  =  settled,  or  stationary?]     The  well-known  port 
of  the    Bi-ld-du  's    Sii-ddn,  or   Country   of  the   Blacks    (the 
"  Soudan  " ),  on  the  Red  Sea,  p.  27. 

The  camel  which  works  the  well  in  Central  Arabia  ;  also 
the  whole  irrigational  apparatus,  p.  47  f  n.  3. 

\^Sho7tter,  as  in  Al  Ghaz-u.]  The  name  of  a  sept  of  the 
Sham-mar,  pp.  83,  122  fn.  5,  281. 

[From  sa-bu',  the  Hon.]  The  name  of  one  of  the  primary 
divisions  of  the  Aeniza,  pp.  63  f.n.  i,  107,  121  in  Table,  122, 
125,  270,  271. 

The  name  of  a  strain  under  Mi'-Nl-Kl,  in  the  stock  of 
Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235   col.  vi. 

The  patronymic  of  each  succeeding  Shekh  of  the  division 
of  the  Sham-mar  which  now  possesses  Al  Jazira.  [The 
local  explanation  of  the  name  is  that  it  signifies  bloodshed; 
and  that  the  first  "  Sfuk  "  received  this  sobriquet  because  of 
a  war  which  happened  in  his  time  between  his  people  and 
the  Wahabis.]     Pp.  122  fn.  5,  124  et  fn.  i. 

[77/1?  infixing  of  part  to  part,  as  in  a  lattice?]  At  p.  215,  the 
name  of  an  Arabian  mare. 

The  name  of  a  horse,  illustration,  and  reference,  pp.  253 
and  254. 

\^ShaJis  coiintenance?\  The  name  of  the  Arabian  horse  de- 
picted in  frontispiece  ;  a  namesake  of  Shah-RUKH,  the  son 
of  Tl-MUR  I  LANG,  or  "Tamerlane." 


'  Al  Kur-an,  in  comparing  the  works  of  unbelievers  with 
the  mirage  [S.  xxiv.],  uses  the  word  sa-r&b.  The  same  term 
occurs  in  Isaiah  xxxv.  7.  The  authors  of  the  Revis.  Vers, 
translate  it  "glowing  sand,"  and  place  "mirage"  in  the 
margin.  The  poetic  desert  figure  of  the  evanescent  delusive 
vapour  being  changed  into  running  water  is  thus  put  on  one 
side.     In  Arabic,  .ra-nii'<  cannot  mean  "glowing  sand."     The 


idea  which  the  ancient  Arabs  attached  to  this  word  is  known 
from  a  passage  in  La-bid's  Mu-a'l-LA-ka.  A  party  of  ladies 
proceeding  in  their  camel-litters,  are  described  as  separated 
from  a  lover's  gaze  by  the  "sa-rab,"  under  the  effects  of 
which  they  appeared  like  the  tamarisks  and  stony  brows  of 
the  valley  of  Bt-sha.  In  Arabic  poetry  another  name  for  the 
sa-r&b,  especially  that  of  the  morning  and  evening,  is  &l. 


386 


GLOSSARTAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Shah-wan 

SHAI-Bi      . 

Sha-1'r     . 
Shak-ra  . 

Shal-fa  . 

Sham 
Sha-m1-ya 


Sham-mar 


Sham-mar  Toga 

SHA-NtN    . 

Sha-ra-b1 
Sha-ra-rAt     . 

Shar-ban 

Sha-ri-a'  . 
Sha-rIf    . 


Shar-k1 


Shar-rAk 


The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  235   col.  vi. 

[Hon! J.]      Ut  supra. 

Barley,  p.  80  f.n.  3. 

A  town  of  Najd,  p.  32  f.n.  i.  Fern,  of  ash-kar — i.e.,  a 
chesnut  mare,  Table  p.  262. 

A  variety  of  the  Bedouin  riiinJi,  or  spear,  in  which  the  iron 
head,  or  si-nan,  is  very  broad,  p.  75. 

The  country  so  named,  p.  65. 

The  well-known  desert  tract  on  the  Upper  Euphrates,  pp. 
20,  23,  42,  58,  63,  65-69,  79,  103,  los,  136,  175,  212,  214,  218, 
236,  242,  259,  269-276,  293,  319. 

The  great  Bedouin  nation  so  named,  pp.  23,  39  f.n.  i,  63 
f.n.  I,  64,  70-77,  85,  103,  122,  123,  124,  125,  129,  139,  210,  264, 
293,  294.  [Numerous  etymologies  of  this  word  have  been 
extracted  from  lexicons,  or  from  the  imagination,  but  it  is 
useless  to  discuss  them.] 

A  people  of  El  I'rak,  pp.  84  f.n.  I,  122.  [The  root  of"  Toga  " 
is  that  of  tu-ivaik,  q.  v.  art.  Ja-bal  Tu-WAIK,  supra.  The 
"  Sham-mar  Toga,"  perhaps,  received  their  designation,  be- 
cause subjugated  by  the  Sham-mar.] 

[Probably  from  the  same  root  as  sha-ni-na,  butter-milk.] 
The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  name  of  a  strain  under  R!-ShAn,  in  the  stock  of 
Ku-hai-lAn,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

A  migratory  people,  whose  di-ras  are  situated  in,  and  near, 
WA-DI  SiR-HAN  towards  Central  Arabia,  pp.  16,  39  f.n.  i,  52, 
59  f.n.  2,  1 28. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-lAn,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi.  [An  Arab  says  that  "shar-ban"  means  an 
animal  which,  witJiout  having  drunk,  is  as  though  it  had 
done  so?\ 

A  way  of  access  to  a  river,  i.e.  a  cutting  made  through  its 
bank,  for  the  use  of  men  and  cattle,  p.  73. 

[Elevated.]  In  Arabia,  the  "  Shu-RA-FA,"  pi.  oi  sha-rif,  are 
the  descendants  of  the  Prophet  through  the  two  sons  of  Hasan. 
The  "  Shu-ra-fa "  devote  themselves  to  war  and  government, 
and  leave  theology  and  letters  to  the  "  SA-dAt,"  pi.  of  Sai- 
YID,  q.  V.  supra.  Pre-eminent  among  the  Shu-RA-fA  is  "  THE 
Sha-rif"  who  forms  the  modern  counterpart  of  the  ancient 
Amirs  of  Mecca,  pp.  29,  117. 

\y.  in  Table  p.  235  col.  i.  sha-rtf  \X'!.%A  in  its  ordinary  sense, 
to  distinguish  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA.] 

[From  shark,  lit.  parting  or  breaking,  whence,  the  rising  of 
the  Sim,  the  eastern  quarter,  and  the  like.]  At  p.  80  f.n.  2,  v. 
a  description  of  the  shar-kt  or  "  sharji,"  wind  of  El  I'rak. 

An  Arab's  name  which  has  come  down  as  that  of  a  well- 
known  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  iii. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


387 


Shattu  'l  A'rab 


Shekh     . 
[For  Shaikh.] 


ShgAr      .... 
Shi-ah     .... 

Shi-a'i-fI  ... 

SHIB-Ri-YA 

Shi-dad  .        .        .        . 

Shil-u     .  ... 

Shi-mal  .... 
[For  Slia-vial  or  Shain-al?\ 

Sni-MA-Lt 

Shim-LAN 

Shi-ta      .... 
Shi-tha-tha  . 
P.  42. 


Shit-ranj 


\_Rivcr  of  the  Arabs^  The  united  Tigris  and  Euphrates, 
from  Gurna  to  the  Gulf  of  Persia,  pp.  20,  74,  78  f  n.  3,  85,  283. 
[Only  a  first-class  river  receives  the  name  of  sliatt.  The 
Arabs  call  a  minor  stream  nahr ;  a  brook,  jad-iual ;  and  a 
rill,  sa-ki-a?\ 

This  widely-known  title  of  respect  corresponds  with  our 
"  elder."  The  superiority  which  is  indicated  by  it  may  be  that 
of  birth,  or  of  years,  or  of  prowess,  or  of  learning,  according  to 
the  ideals  of  different  communities.  In  India,  the  use  of  the 
word  as  a  part  of  men's  names  has  all  but  effaced  its  distinc- 
tiveness. In  Persia  and  the  towns  of  El  I'rak,  any  one  who 
possesses  a  large  turban  may  play  the  Shekh.  Pp.  52,  61,  71, 
72,76,  83,  85,  104,  107,  112  fn.  I,  124,  125,  131,  134,  136,  138. 

A  certain  blemish  in  Arabian  horses,  p.  313. 

[PI.  of  shat,  wild  creatures^  The  name  of  a  strain  in 
Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

\_Sineared  or  smearing  ivitli  ia/:]      Ut  supra,  col.  ii. 

A  kind  of  knife  or  dagger,  p.  46  fn.  i. 

\Tliat  which  is  made  fast  on  a  beast's  back.']  Another  name 
for  the  rahl  ox  camel-saddle,  p.  301. 

[Light  of  fleshy  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA, 
Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

The  north  or  north-west  wind.  In  most  regions  this  is  the 
wind  for  which  the  Arabs  pray,  p.  80. 

[From  the  quarter  of  the  north  ivind^  Shi-ma-li  horses,  pp. 
272  et  f  n.  2,  273. 

The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  I'ma-rat  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

Winter,  p.  50  fn.  2. 

A  very  great  "mother  of  dates"  in  Sha-mi-ya,  a  day's  journey 
west  of  Kar-ba-Ia.  Belts  of  palm  cultivation,  extending  for 
several  miles,  embrace  a  natural  spring,  which  fills  an  open 
pond  or  pool  with  tepid  and  fetid  mineral  water.  Our  visit 
to  Shi-tha-tha  took  place  in  winter,  when  the  ordinary  streams 
were  more  or  less  frozen  ;  but  the  water  in  the  central  pond 
maintained  its  high  temperature.  The  inhabitants  are  of  the 
Shi-i'.  The  only  Sun-nis  are  the  Osmanli  officials.  It  would 
appear  that  the  Jews  once  possessed  this  oasis,  as  they 
did  Yath-rib.  It  contains  many  imposing,  though  ruinous, 
chateaux,  some  of  which  still  bear  the  names  of  otherwise 
forgotten  Jew  owners. 

Chess,  p.  54  f  n.  2.  [Shit-ranj  is  considered  to  be  a  Persian 
corruption  of  chatti-ranga,  in  Sanscrit,  the  fotir  angas — i.e., 
four  members,  of  an  army ;  scil.,  elephants,  horses,  chariots, 
and  foot-soldiers.  The  "  king  "  and  "  queen  "  of  the  English 
game  play  corresponding  parts  in  the  Eastern  one  also.  Our 
"  knight,"  "  bishop,"  "  castle,"  and  "  pawn  "  respectively,  are 
the  "  horse,"  "  camel,"  "  elephant,"  and  "  foot-soldier  "  of  the 
Asiatic  chess-board.] 


388 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


Shu-a'i-la 
Shu-ra-ba-tu  'r  rih 

Shu-wai-man  . 


Sl-Dl 
SiD-Li 

SlM-RI 

Sin-jar 


SiN-JA-RA 
SiR-HAN    . 


SI-TAMU   'L   Bt>-LAD 

Sleb,  or  SlebI 

[More    correctly,   Su-LAI-Bi, 
collectively,  As  Su-LA-BA.] 


The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Khaai-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 
The  name  of  an  African  race  of  Arabian  horses,  p.  253  ei 
f  n.  6. 

[Diminutive  of  shd-jiia,  a  i?iole,  also  one  of  the  markings  in 
horse's  coats  which  are  referred  to  at  p.  264.]      The  name  of 
a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 
[From  as-zvad,  black.']     The  negro,  p.  107  fa.  3. 
The  name  of  a  strain  under  Ml'-NI-KI,  in  the  stock  of  Ku- 
HAI-lAn,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

[ZrtWKj'.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table 
p.  235  col.  iv. 

The  name  of  a  mountain-range,  and  of  an  ancient  settle- 
ment, between  Mosul  and  Der,  pp.  5,  6  et  fn.  3,  73,  74,  75, 
yj  in  illustration,  124  fn.  i,  133. 

The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar,  p.  122. 
[Mea7ideri?ig]  Wa-di  Sir-han  [pp.  37,  52,  75]  is  the  name 
of  a  long  and  sinuous  depression  "bearing,  in  the  main, 
from  north-west  to  south-east,  or  nearly  so,"  which  extends 
across  half  the  northern  desert,  from  Al  Hau-ran,  to  Al 
Jauf.  [The  dkeb,  or  wolf,  is  poetically  designated  AbA  sir- 
hdn,  or  Father  of  prowling,  because  of  his  circuitous  gait  ; 
and  probably  "  Wadi  Sir-han  "  owes  the  epithet  which  serves 
as  its  name  to  the  same  feature.] 

\_Sine'ws  of  steel  or  zj'ou.]  The  name  of  a  strain  under  JlL- 
FAN,  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

A  people  of  high  antiquity  in  Arabia,  whose  origin  is  un- 
known, p.  74.  In  many  respects  the  Su-la-ba,  or  "  Sleb," 
are  the  counterpart  of  our  gipsies.  Asses  are  their  only 
cattle.  Wherever  they  wander,  from  Syria  to  Najd,  their 
skill  as  joiners.  Tubal  Cains,  and  implement-makers  gains 
them  a  welcome.  They  are  also  the  herbalists  and  horse- 
surgeons  of  the  desert.  They  display  the  true  gipsy  light- 
heartedness  ;  and  their  songs  and  musical  instruments  would 
repay  investigation.  Before  all  things  they  excel  in  hunting. 
The  Bedouin  do  not  regard  them  as  Arabs.  "  Ki-labu  '1  kha- 
la,"  or  wild  dogs,  is  one  of  the  contemptuous  names  which 
they  give  to  them  ;  but  they  also  say  that  all  the  game  of  the 
desert  belongs  to  them.  When  the  Bedouin  are  starving,  the 
Su-la-ba  will  be  gathered  round  messes  of  venison.  [The 
word  which  in  literary  Arabic  denotes  "  the  Cross,"  is  "  Sa-lib," 
and  this  has  given  rise  to  the  conjecture  that  the  "Sleb"  may 
have  a  Christian  history.  But  the  primary  meaning  of  the 
Arabic  root  sib  is  simply  strength,  or  stiffness.  The  word 
for  the  backbone  is  su-lnb.  The  Bedouin  call  the  two  small 
pieces  of  wood  which  they  place  crossways  in  the  mouth 
of  the  leathern  well-bucket  to  keep  it  open,  sa-lt-bdn.  In 
Persia  and  India,  sa-la-bat,  with  the  sense  oi  firmness,  has 
entered  into  many  high-sounding  titles.] 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT.  389 

SU-BAI-n1,  or  ibn  SUBAINi        .  The  name  of  a  family  of  Bedouin,  after  wliicli  is  called  a 

strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  ii. 

Suez The  well-known  Egyptian  port  on  the  Red  Sea,  p.  20.    [The 

only  reasonable  conjecture  on  the  point  of  etymology  which 
we  have  seen  is,  that  "  Su-zvais  "  may  have  originated  in  an 
old  word,  which  the  Greeks  Hellenised  into  oasis — i.e.,  an  in- 
habited spot  in  the  desert.] 

SC-FI The   nearest   English   equivalent   of   this   term   perhaps  is 

"  Theosophist."  ^  A  full  account  of  Siif-ism  would  necessarily 
include  a  review  of  all  the  appearances  of  "  Mysticism,"  from 
the  days  when  the  sages  of  ancient  India  were  absorbed  in 
the  problem  of  extrication  from  self,  and  assimilation  to  the 
"  Ultimate  Unity,"  down  to  our  time.  But  the  Su-fis  of  El 
Is-lam  took  their  rise  in  Persia.  From  very  ancient  times  the 
Iranian  soil  has  been  the  fruitful  mother  of  new  religions. 
Accordingly,  there  is  little  wonder  that,  when  a  "  plain 
Kur-an  "  was  summarily  imposed  upon  it,  a  reactionary  out- 
burst of  the  old  pantheistic  ideas  followed.  Thus  began 
Persian  Suf-ism,  in  the  first  century  after  Muhammad  ;  and 
it  still  flourishes  in  El  I'rak  and  Persia,  Syria,  Turkey, 
Central  Asia,  and  India.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  Arab 
Prophet's  teaching,  Suf-ism  is  simply  "Ku/i;"  or  "  infidelity  "  ; 
but  the  Su-fi  masses,  in  leaving  the  paths  of  "  sound  doctrine  " 
for  those  of  metaphysical  speculation,  keep  hold  at  least  of 
the  skirts  of  Shi-ite  Islamism. 

Most  of  us  know  how  deeply  Persian  literature  after  the 
Flight^  is  indebted  to  Sufite  elements,  but  looked  at  from 
the  practical  side,  Suf-ism  is  probably  not  unconnected  with 
the  weakness  of  Persia  as  a  nation.  The  foundations  of 
energy  and  effort  are  more  or  less  sapped  by  it.  Hafiz  in 
one  of  his  Odes  describes  his  mental  state  as  so  ecstatic,  that 
every  object  which  he  beheld  set  him  a-weeping.  Another 
poetic  inculcator  of  passivity  compares  the  soul  of  the  per- 
fected Su-fi  to  the  surface  of  a  pellucid  lake  on  which  not  a 
mote  can  fall  unnoticed.  It  is  all  very  well  for  "  emancipated 
persons"  to  surrender  themselves  to  conditions  of  this  de- 
scription ;  but  when  a  whole  nation  more  or  less  inclines  in 
the  same  direction,  the  elements  of  strength  are  evidently 
wanting. 

SUF-RA A  traveller's  provisions,  whence,  the  receptacle  thereof,  and 

as  it  is  customary  to  spread  this  out,  at  meal-times,  anything 
off  tvhich  one  eats,  p.  93  f.n.  i . 


1  It  [is  possible  that  "  Su-fl  "  is  from  <ro<>><Jj  ;  but  Eastern  na"  (meaning  our  Master)  Ja-Hlu 'd  din,  Rii-mi,  of  our  13th 

scholars  derive  the  name  from  «?/;  wool;  under  the  explana-      \      century.      The   Mas-na-vt   contains   between   30,000   and 


tion  that  one  of  the  early  leaders  of  the  movement,  a  cer- 
tain Abu  Sa-i'd,  Urn  Abi  '1  Khair,  and  his  disciples,  wore 
a  distinctive  garb  of  woollen  stuff. 

=  Especially  the  works  of   Sa'-di   and   Ha-fiz ;   and   the 
MAS-NA-vi  Ma'-na-vi,  or  Spiritual  Collection,  of  "Mau-la- 


40,000  double  -  rhymed  verses.  A  European  scholar  de- 
scribes its  author  as  "soaring  on  the  wings  of  a  genuine 
enthusiasm  high  above  earth  and  heaven,  up  to  the  throne  of 
Almighty  God,"  and  the  poem,  as  a  "production  of  the 
highest  poetical  and  religious  intuition." 


390 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


SU-GUR      .  .  .  . 

SU-HAIL     .  .  .  , 

SU-HAI-NI 
SU-KHAM  ... 

SuKu  'SH  Shu-yOkh 

SU-LAI-MAN 
SU-LAI-MA-Ni-YA       . 

SUL-TAN   . 

SU-MAI-SAT   et  Sam-SAT 

SU-MUT  [pi.  of  silllt] 


Sun-nI  and  ShI-i' 
\_A7tglice,     "Sun-nite" 

"  Shi-ite."] 
Pp.  113  f.n.  2,  159,  281. 


and 


[PI.  of  sakr,  or  "  sagar,"  any  game-catching  hawk.]  The 
name  of  a  horde  of  the  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121. 

Canopus,  in  constellation  A.  Argus.  P.  50  fn.  2.  [This 
brilliant  star  crosses  the  meridian  of  Baghdad,  in  Lat.  33^  21' 
N.,  at  6  h.  13  m.  A.M.,  20th  September;  and  rises  at  9  h. 
57  m.  P.M.] 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235 
col.  iii. 

The  name  of  a  hound,  p.  145. 

A  settlement  of  the  Arabs,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates, 
pp.  83,  85,  300. 

The  Arabic  proper  name,  pp.  106,  227  et  f  n.  5. 

A  town  on  the  Turco-Persian  frontier,  200  miles  east  of 
Baghdad.  It  is  about  100  years  old,  and  is  named  after  a 
Governor-General  of  the  Baghdad  Pashalik.  Pp.  148,  159  f.n. 
5,  281  f.n.  2. 

[In  Arabic,  an  absolute  Jiiler.']  For  page  references  to 
H.I.M.  the  Sultan,  v.  Index  ii. 

[The  ancient  Samosata.]  A  site  on  the  Euphrates  (about 
1200  miles  above  its  embouchure)  near  which  the  river  is  con- 
sidered to  enter  the  Syrian  plain,  p.  71. 

[A7ty  suspended  things?^  The  Bedouin  give  this  name  to 
the  cords,  often  of  variegated  worsted,  which  they  attach  to 
the  cantle  of  the  saddle,  pp.  141  (in  illustration)  et  142. 

Without  overlooking  the  well-known  fact  that  the  etymo- 
logical root  of  a  word  is  not  a  safe  guide  to  its  signification, 
we  would  just  mention  that,  in  the  bare  root-sense,  Sun-nt 
means  one  who  follows  the  regular  path,  or  customary  law 
{sun-na);  and  Skt-f,  one  who  makes,  or  joins,  a  separate 
party  or  sect  {sM-a')} 

The  Shi-a',  par  excellence — i.e.,  the  greatest  schism  which 
the  history  of  El  Islam  exhibits — is  intimately  associated  with 
the  career  of  A'li ;  so  much  so,  that  it  is  often  called  by  his 
name.  In  the  lifetime  of  A'li,  "  the  party  of  A'li "  was,  how- 
ever, a  political,  not  a  theological,  body  ;  and  A'li  himself  was 
not  a  "  Shi-ite,"  but  is  often  quoted  as  an  authority  in  the 
books  of  the  Ha-dith.  For  the  elucidation  of  this  subject, 
the  fact  must  first  be  recalled  that  the  commonwealth  which 
Muhammad  founded  was  essentially  a  religious  democracy. 
The  Prophet  died  sonless,  and  without  explicitly  indicating 
a  successor  {Khalifa,  or  "  Caliph  ").  The  elective,  as  opposed 
to  the  dynastic,  principle  was  thus  left  all  the  freer  ;  and  every 
reader  knows  how  Abu-bakr  was  chosen  Caliph.  Among  the 
disappointed  candidates  of  course  was  the  Prophet's  son-in- 
law  and  near  kinsman,  A'li,      During  all  the  time  that   the 


'  In  India,  a  member  of  the  Shi-a'  is  called  a  "  Shi-a' "  ; 
but  in  Arabia  and  El  I'rak,  they  correctly  say  "  Shi-a'  "  for 


the  sect,  and  "Shi-l'  "  for  the  adherent  of  it. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


391 


Sun-nI  and  Slii-i' — continued. 


Arab  empire  was  being  spread  abroad,  A'li  persistently  op- 
posed the  Government.  His  efforts,  we  know,  so  far  pre- 
vailed, that,  in  succession  to  U'th-man,  he  was  nominated  the 
fourth  Caliph  ;  but  his  capacity  proved  unequal  to  his  am- 
bition. After  a  series  of  reverses,  he  was  assassinated  at 
Ku-fa,  in  El  I'rak,  by  one  of  those  puritanic  soldiers  and 
genuine  zealots  who  are  described  in  article  Kha-WA-RIJ, 
S7ipra.  After  his  death  he  was  elevated  to  the  rank  of  a 
national  hero ;  ^  and  the  tragic  fate  which  subsequently  befell 
his  son  Hu-sain,  with  many  other  members  of  the  Ahlu  'l 
BAIT,  or  family  of  the  Prophet,  at  Karbala,  further  contributed 
to  render  permanent  the  breach  between  the  Sun-ni  and  the 
Shi-i'.  On  the  whole,  it  is  open  to  doubt  whether  the  historical 
A'li  possesses  much  in  common  with  any  of  the  divisions  of 
Islamism  which  have  used  his  name.  All's  aim,  as  has  just 
appeared,  was  to  press  his  own  claims  to  the  Caliphate," 
chiefly  on  the  grounds  of  his  relationship  to  the  Prophet. 
From  this  point  of  view  his  cause  was  favoured  by  the 
Persians,  in  whom  the  idea  of  hereditary  monarchy  is  firmly 
rooted.  But  Persia  is  also  the  ancient  home  {v.  art.  Su-FI, 
supra)  of  conceptions  diametrically  opposed  to  Arabian 
monotheism;  and  the  Shi-a',  or  ^^ party  of  A'li,"  no  sooner 
became  the  national  party  of  the  Persian  race  than  doc- 
trines which  A'li  would  have  been  the  first  to  repudiate 
were  brought  out  as  part  of  the  true  Is-lam,  and  spread 
by  means  of  emissaries  over  the  Muslim  world. 

The  Sunnitcs,  including  the  Wahabis,  are  at  least  five 
times  as  numerous  as  all  the  other  divisions  of  Islamism 
put  together — that  is,  the  Shi-ites  (^' I  thud  a  -sha-ri-ya"^ 
" Is-md-z'-li-ya"  and  others),  and  the  unconditional  predes- 
tinarian  sect  of  A'bdu  '11a  ibn  I-badh,  the  headquarters  of 
which  is  in  Oman.  It  is  sometimes  represented  that  the 
Sunnites  stand  in  that  relation  to  the  other  divisions  of  El 


'The  common  representation  that  the  Sun-nis  "hold 
A'li's  memory  in  abhorrence  "  is  ahogether  erroneous.  It  is 
true  that  the  Sun-ni  rabble,  when  they  hear  those  of  the 
Shi-a'  claiming  for  A'li  more  than  human  dignity,  are  apt, 
in  a  spirit  of  sectarian  protest,  to  disparage  him  ;  but  this 
means  nothing.  After  the  massacre  at  Karbala,  they  cut  off 
the  head  of  Husain,  the  son  of  A'li,  and  forwarded  it  to 
Damascus.  According  to  the  historian  Tabari  (ii.  282),  the 
Caliph  Ya-zid,  when  he  received  the  trophy,  struck  with  his 
cane  the  senseless  features.  This  action  caused  a  profound 
sensation;  and  a  bystander  exclaimed,  "Put  up  thy  cane! 
By  Allah  !  how  often  have  I  seen  the  Prophet  of  God  kiss 
these  lips!"  It  is  superfluous  to  add  that  the  same  sym- 
pathy with  the  Prophet's  kindred  is  still  prevalent.  From 
Abbaside  times  at  least,  all  the  Muslim  have  regarded  A'li 
and  Husain  as  martyrs  and  heroes.  No  Arab,  and  no  Muslim 
who  is  above  the  level  of  the  canaille,  needs  to  learn  from 
Persians  how  to  reverence  A'li's  memory.      V.  p.  239  f.n.  2. 


'-  If  proof  were  wanting  that  A'li,  according  to  contempo- 
rary opinion,  merely  fought  for  himself,  the  rejection  of  his 
cause  by  the  Kha-wa-rij  would  supply  it.  These  "soldiers 
of  the  Faith"  unquestionably  constituted  the  only  great 
party  which  was  in  earnest  in  opposing  the  secularisation  of 
El  Islam.  At  first  they  ranked  among  the  numerous  mal- 
contents who  made  common  cause  with  A'li ;  but  at  a  later 
period  they  stubbornly  refused  to  fight  for  him.  Ultimately, 
one  of  their  number  slew  him. 

'  Literally,  Twelvers  —  i.e.,  votaries  of  the  twelve  "  I- 
mams,"  and  de  jure  Caliphs,  A'li  and  his  eleven  imme- 
diate heirs  through  Fa-ti-ma.  A  tenet  of  the  great  mass  of 
Shi-ites  is,  that  the  last  of  these  Imams  was  one  Muham- 
madu  '1  Mahdi,  of  the  3d  Islamic  century.  At  Baghdad  a 
general  belief  pervades  the  Shi-a',  that  this  Muhammad,  of 
whose  death  there  is  no  record,  is  all  this  time  lying  perdu, 
probably  near  Sa-mar-ra  on  the  Tigris,  biding  the  time  when 
he  shall  reappear  to  fill  the  world  with  righteousness. 


392 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


SUN-NI  AND  Shi-i' — continued. 


Su-RA 

Su-II'D  et  Sa-a'd 

SU-WAH     . 

SU-WAI-LI-MAT 

SU-WAI-Tt 


Islam  in  which  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  stands  to  the 
Reformed  sects  of  Christendom.  The  basis  of  this  com- 
parison of  course  is,  that  the  Sun-nis  trace  back  their 
authoritative  canon,  both  religious  and  political,  withont  any 
interniption,  to  the  Prophet  ;  while  the  Shi-a'  ignores  in 
every  possible  manner  the  first  three  Caliphs.^  Up  to 
a  certain  point  some  such  parallelism  may  be  sustained  ;  but 
when  we  have  regard  to  the  numerous  superstitious  beliefs 
and  embellishments  which  now  form  an  integral  part  of  the 
Shi-a',  we  are  more  reminded  of  the  Rom.an  than  of  the 
Protestant  phase  of  Christianity.  The  term  "worship"  is  too 
ambiguous  to  be  used  rashly  ;  but  the  commemorative  scenes 
which  are  enacted  every  year  at  Karbala  and  Najaf,  and  at 
the  other  great  seats  of  the  Shi-ite  theology  in  El  Prak  and 
Persia,  attest  the  fullest  possible  development  of  the  idea  that 
A'lt  and  his  descendants  are  veritable  deities. 

The  designation  of  the  individual  Pieces  of  Al  Kur-AN, 
V.  p.  xiv  of  prefixes  of  vol.,  in  f.n.  i. 

Co-derivative  proper  names,  implying  the  idea  oi  good  for- 
tune, which  often  occur  in  the  annals  of  the  Wahabite  mon- 
archy, pp.  39  fn.  2,  42,  43,  51,  162,  253. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi. 

[Plural  of  su-wai-li-nia,  diminutive  of  sd-li-via,  sotmd.']  The 
name  of  a  horde  of  the  Aeniza,  Table  pp.  121,  136. 

\_The  strain  belonging  to  tlie  man  zvith  the  little  whip?\ 
Table  p.  235  col.  i. 


Ta-ba-RI 


Tad-mur  . 
Tai  . 
Ta-if 

Tai-ma 


T 

Abu  Ja'-far  Muhammad,  ibn  Ja-ri-ri  't  Ta-ba-ri  (i.e.,  of 
Tabaristan),  was  one  of  the  ornaments  of  Baghdad  in  our 
9th  century.  His  two  chief  works  are  a  great  commentary 
on  the  Kur-an,  and  his  Annals.  Books  of  Arabian  history 
and  biography  began  to  be  written  in  Arabic  in  the  2d 
century  after  the  Flight ;  but  all  these  histories  are  more  or 
less  thrown  into  the  shade  by  the  great  work  of  Tabari. 
P.  28  f.n.  4. 

The  well-known  place-name,  pp.  66  et  f  n.  i,  100,  300. 

A  nation  of  the  Bedouin,  pp.  62  et  f.n.  2,  75,  124. 

An  ancient  town  in  the  high  land  above  Mecca,  p.  59,  f  n.  2. 

The  name  of  an  oasis  in  Al  Hi-jaz,  p.  49.  ["Tema" 
appears  in  a  genealogical  table  in  Gen.  xxv.  15.     In  Isaiah 


^  It  followed  logically  from  this  disavowment  by  the  Shi-a' 
of  A'li's  three  predecessors  that,  on  the  failure  of  A'li's  visible 
descendants,  the  Caliphate,  according  to  Shi-ite  dogma,  fell 
into  abeyance.     In  Sun-nite  Turkey,  the  Sultan  is  regarded 


as  ex  officio  the  successor  and  representative  of  the  Prophet. 
But  in  Shi-ite  Persia  the  Shah  is  looked  upon  merely  as  the 
deputy  of  the  "Hidden  Prince"  of  A'li's  race,  whose  title  is 
Al  Mah-di,  or  The  divinely  guided. 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


393 


TA-jl 
Tak-rit 


Tal-a't  Mil-him 


Tall 

Gush     . 

Tallu  'l  lahm 
Tam-hur  . 
Tamr 


Tam-ri     .... 
Ta-ra-fa. 

Ta-r!-ka  .... 

Tas 

Tatar,  Tatar,  Tattar 
Pp.  74,  89,  f.n,  I,  266. 


Tat-tu     . 
Tau-kAn  . 

Ta-wIl     . 
Tha-bit    . 

Thai-yil  . 


xxi.  14,  we  see  the  inhabitants  of  the  land  of  Tema  bringing 
water  unto  him  that  was  thirsty,  and  meeting  the  fugitives 
with  their  bread.] 

In  El  I'rak,  p.  84  fn.  i. 

A  town  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Tigris,  120  miles  above 
Baghdad,  pp.  ']i,  75,  281.  [From  Mosul  to  Baghdad  it  is  250 
miles  by  river,  and  Tak-rit  is  the  only  permanent  settlement 
which  one  passes.  Ordinary  river  steamers  cannot  ascend 
the  Tigris  much  higher  than  Tak-rit,  without  the  risk  of 
being  stranded,  and  perhaps  having  to  lie  in  the  desert  till 
the  river  rise  in  the  following  spring.] 

A  spot  in  Sha-mi-ya,  p.  6},  fn.  2.  [If  some  traveller 
between  Baghdad  and  Aleppo,  by  the  Euphrates  route, 
would  make  a  careful  sketch  of  the  "  Tal-a't  of  Shekh 
Milhim,"  it  would  help  to  settle  the  question  of  whether 
the  desert  term  '^tal-dt"  denotes  an  elevated  spot,  or  a  corrie, 
or  the  tail  of  detritus  which  is  washed  down  frovi  the  corrie^ 

Any  natural  or  artificial  eminence,  p.  84  fn.  i. 

Name  of  a  mound  near  Baghdad,  ibid. 

The  Bedouin  dish,  p.  191  fn.  i. 

Name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  iii. 

The  fruit  of  the  date-palm  tree.  Dates,  p.  66  fn.  i. 
[As  "  tamarind,"  or  Indian  tamr,  we  have  this  word  in 
Europe.]     The  proper  name  Tamar,  p.   134. 

[Date-coloured.^  Name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table 
p.  235  col.  i. 

A  single  tamarisk  tree.  The  generic  name  is  Tar-fa.  Ref- 
erences to  Ta-ra-fa,  one  of  the  poets  of  THE  Mu-'al-LA-KAT, 
pp.  57,234,255  f.n.  I. 

At  the  root  of  this  word  is  the  idea  of  beating.  The  Arabs 
and  Persians  use  it  in  several  senses,  p.  144  f  n.  2. 

A  drinking-cup ;  also  the  cap,  or  cup,  which  protects  the 
head  in  a  suit  of  armour,  p.  104  fn.  i. 

A  high  authority  identifies  this  name  with  that  of  the 
"  Ta-ta "  Mongols,  who  in  our  5th  century  inhabited  the 
great  sandy  desert  of  Gobi,  in  Central  Asia.  It  is  now 
generally  applied  to  all  the  Mongol  hordes  who  followed 
Jenghis  Kaan  and  his  successors.  [One  of  the  impressive 
foreign  words  occurring  in  Al  Kur-An  is  "  tat-rd,"  which  is 
used  (S.  xxiii.)  to  convey  an  idea  of  the  spreading  abroad  of 
Allah's  prophets  before  Muhammad.] 

The  Indian  pony,  p.  259  et  fn.  i. 

Name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-hai-lAn,  Table  p. 
235  col.  vi. 

Long,  p.  75  fn.  I. 

[Established?^  The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar, 
p.  122. 

Agrestis  linearis,  p.  82  fn.  i. 

3  D 


394 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Thar-thar 


Thaub 

TiBN  WA   SHA-I'R 

[At]  Ti-ha-ma 
P.  26. 


Tl-LAL        . 

Tippoo  Sahib  , 

TOBBA'        . 
TU-MAN     . 

Tur-k!     . 


TuRK-u-JiAN  or  Turcoman  . 
[Correctly  Turk-inan?\ 
For   page  references  v.  In- 
dex ii. 


TU-WAI-SAN 


A  cleft  extending  from  the  Sin-jar  range  to  south  of 
Tak-rit,  p.  73.  In  some  years,  and  in  some  places,  Thar-thar 
may  contain,  up  to  May,  a  current  fifty  yards  broad.  It 
keeps  varying  between  that  condition  and  sheer  dryness. 
Only  the  Arabs  can  drink  its  brackish  waters. 

The  long  Arab  shirt,  p.  140. 

The  horse  provender  of  El  I'rak  and  Arabia,  p.  80  f  n.  3. 

A  very  hot  region,  which,  as  the  name  is  now  generally 
applied,  forms  the  sea-shore  strip  of  Yemen  ;  although  many 
of  the  Arabs  follow  El  Asma'-i  in  reckoning  Mecca,  and 
all  the  low-lying  region  round  it,  not  to  El  Hi-jaz,  but  to 
the  Ti-ha-ma. 

\Light  refreshmg  rai7i?[  The  name  of  a  prince  of  Jabal 
Sham-mar,  p.  40. 

Sultan  of  Mysore  (1749- 1799),  p.  95. 

The  hereditary  title  of  the  ancient  kings  of  Yemen,  p.  27 
et  f.n.  6. 

A  subdivis.  of  the  Sham-mar,  p.  122. 

The  personal  name,  or  distinguishing  epithet,  of  a  gallant 
prince  of  the  Ibnu  's  Su-ud  family,  who,  from  1824  to  his 
death  ten  years  later,  successfully  headed  a  revolt  of  the 
Arab  tribes  against  the  Turkish  power  in  Central  Arabia, 
p.  40. 

The  term  "Turk,"  meaning  one  of  the  "  Osmanli,"  is  more 
of  a  political  and  conventional  than  of  an  ethnic  definition. 
Between  the  nth  and  13th  Christian  centuries  hordes  of 
Tatars  continually  passed  westward  out  of  Central  Asia, 
owing  to  the  rise  of  the  Mongol  power.  Many  of  these  im- 
migrants settled  in  Persia,  where  they  received  the  name 
of  "  Turk-man."  In  our  day  the  Shah's  so-called  Turkish 
"  Ili-yat,"  or  nomads,  are  thus  designated.  But  the  "  Turk- 
mans "  proper  consist  of  all  those  formidable  horse-riding 
nations  of  Tekkes,  Saryks,  and  very  many  others,  who 
possess,  under  Russia,  the  steppe-land  east  of  the  Caspian. 
According  to  Marco  Polo,  "  excellent  horses,  called  Turquans, 
existed  among  the  Muslim  hordes  of  Turcomania."  (Bk.  I., 
ch.  ii.) 

[Diminutive  from  ta-fLS,  a  peacock.]  The  name  of  a  strain 
in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 


u 


U'-BAID 


tl-BAI-Rl-YA 


[Diminutive  from  dbd?\  (i)  The  name  of  a  Bedouin 
nation  of  El  I'rak,  pp.  82,  83,  84  fn.  i.  The  horses  of  the 
U'baid,  p.  280.  (2)  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-sa, 
Table  p.  235  col.  iii. 

The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  ii. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND    SUPPLEMENT. 


395 


U'-BAI-YAN 


U'-DHAIM 


U'FAIR 


Ug-mu-sa 


U'J-MAN 


U'-LA-MA  [pi.  of  a'-lilli\ 

U'mair     . 


Umm 

Ummu  'l  ib-il 

U'-NAI-ZA 


UR-Dtr 

Ur-fa 


U'-RCl-jt-YA        . 

U'r-wa  ibnu  'l  Ward 

U'-TAI-BA 


U'-YUN       . 
U'-ZAIR      . 


[From  dba,  the  Arab  cloak.]  Tradition  narrates  that  a 
desert  Arab  who  was  being  pursued  threw  off"  his  cloak, 
because  it  caught  the  wind,  and  afterv/ards  found  it  hanging 
over  his  mare's  tail,  so  high  did  she  carry  it.  And  the  mare 
of  the  story  is  held  to  have  originated  the  "  U'-bai-yan " 
branch  of  Al  Kham-SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  iii. 

\Greatness?\  The  name  of  a  tributary  of  the  Tigris,  pp. 
82,  282. 

[  V.  art.  Ophir,  supra?\  The  name  of  a  riding-ass  of  the 
Prophet's,  p.  230. 

[Prob.  from  KA-MIS,  q.  v.  supra^  A  great  confederation 
of  the  Sba'  Aeniza,  Table  p.  121,  68. 

Bedouin  Arabs  of  the  peninsula,  who  are  held  to  be  of 
Persian  (a-ja-mf)  origin,  pp.  29,  59  f.n.  2,   100. 

Men  of  knowledge  and  learning,  p.  207  fn.  i. 

[Diminutive  of  U'mr.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham- 
SA,  Table  p.  235  col.  i.  ;  and  of  a  strain  which  is  shown  in 
col.  vi.  of  the  same  Table. 

Mother,  i.e.,  originator,  cause,  origin,  or  principle  of  a  thing, 
pp.  34  fn.  I,  57  f.n.  5. 

An  epithet  of  Najd,  p.  57  f  n.  5. 

At  p.  56,  a  girl's  name.  The  town  of  U'-nai-za,  in  Najd, 
pp.  32  f.n.  I,  258.  [A  recent  writer  says,  "The  horse-dealers 
of  Onaiza  procure  young  horses  from  the  nomads  round  the 
town,  even  as  far  as  Yemen,  and  ship  these  (known  in  India 
as  Onaiza  horses)  at  Ku-wait  for  Bombay."  ^  This  account 
requires  correction.  Neither  in  India  nor  anywhere  else  does 
the  term  "  Aeniza  horse "  denote  a  horse  which  has  been 
bought  by  an  inhabitant  of  Onaiza.  An  "  Aeniza  horse"  is 
one  which  has  been  bred  by  the  Aeniza  Bedouin  in  the  Arabian 
desert,  irrespectively  of  locality.] 

The  Aryan  term ,  p.  59. 

The  well-known  town  of  the  Turkish  empire,  in  Al  Jazira, 
on  the  Daisun,  a  left-hand  tributary  of  the  Euphrates,  seventy- 
five  miles  west  of  Diar-bakr,  pp.  61,  ill  fn.  2,  272,  300. 

The    name    of   a    strain   in    Al    Kham-SA,   Table  p.    235 
col.  ii. 
-     The  Di-wan  of ,  p.  179  f  n.  i. 

[Root  idea,  anger?[  The  name  of  a  great  Bedouin  nation, 
pp.  10,  59  fn.  I,  62.  Guarmani  is  responsible  for  the  state- 
ment that  the  horses  of  the  U'tai-ba  are  esteemed  the  best  of 
all  the  horses  of  the  deserts  of  Najd. 

[Plural  of  a'in,  the  primary  meaning  of  which  is  said  to  be 
the  ej'e.]     With  the  meaning  of  springs,  p.  105. 

The  Biblical  name  "Ezra"  is  thus  written  in  Al  Kur-AN. 
P.  100  et  f  n.  I. 


^  Eacf.  Brit.,  vol.  x\'ii.  p.  774. 


396 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


w 


Wa-dhI-ha      .        .        .        . 
WA-Di 

WA-Dt  Da-wA-sir  . 

Wa-d1 

Wad-nan        .        . 

[Al]  Wah-hAb 

Wah-hA-b1       .        .        .        . 
For  page  references  v.  Waha- 
byism  in  Index  ii. 


Wald  A'lI 
WA-lI       . 

Washm    . 


The  ox-like  antelope,  or  "  wild  cow,"  of  the  Arabian  wilder- 
ness, p.  145  fn.  I. 

This  word,  now  naturalised  in  Europe,  has  a  wide  range  of 
meaning,  from  the  great  strath  or  valley  down  to  the  merest 
gully,  or  "fiumara,"  pp.  37,  52,  65,  68,  73,  75. 

The  name  of  a  strip  of  Najd,  p.  32  fn.  i.  The  inhabitants 
thereof,  p.  59  f.n.  2. 

The  government  tax  on  camels  in  El  I'rak,  p.  84  f  n.  2. 

\_PHny  of  bii-tk.']  The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of 
Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table  p.  235  col.  vi. 

In  the  theology  of  the  Muslim,  an  attribute  of  the  Divine, 
p.  107  fn.  I. 

An  epithet  formed  from  the  second  part  of  the  name  of 
A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab,  of  Najd,  the  resolute  enemy  of  "saint- 
worship,"  relics,  and  pilgrimages.  A  "  Wah-ha-bi  "  is  one 
who  recognises  in  A'bdu  '1  Wah-hab's  teaching  the  latest 
great  exposition  of  the  Prophet  Muhammad's  testimony. 
The  Government  of  Turkey,  and  the  Turks  themselves, 
yielding  to  practical  considerations  and  to  natural  laxity, 
have  so  considerably  watered  down  the  peculiar  leaven  of 
Islamism,  that  even  the  more  moderate  of  the  Wahabis  who 
are  residents  of  Ottoman  cities  find  it  advisable  to  screen 
themselves  from  notice  behind  the  name  of  one  of  the  four 
schools  of  "cold  orthodoxy,"  usually  that  called  after  AH- 
MAD ibn  Han-BAL  {c.  a.d.  Boo)  of  Baghdad. 

In  India,  where  the  circle  of  sound  Arabic  scholarship 
grows  narrower  every  year,  the  Wahabite  element  is  broadly 
divisible  into  three  classes.  First,  we  find  adventurers  from 
parts  like  Bussorah  who  possess  just  sufficient  scholarship 
to  mislead  the  Indians.  Then  come  Indian  townsmen, 
equally  ignorant  and  fanatical,  who  from  various  motives 
desire  to  upset  the  Government  under  which  they  have 
thriven.  Lastly,  rustic  youths  are  never  wanting,  whose 
untutored  minds  it  is  easy  to  inflame  with  visions  of  "  Holy 
War"  and  Paradise,  so  that  they  shall  attempt  impossibilities 
in  the  name  of  Allah. 

The  name  of  a  subdivis.  of  the  Aeniza,  pp.  63  fn.  1,  68, 
Table  p.  121. 

In  the  Ottoman  empire,  the  Governor  of  a  province,  pp. 
100  fn.  I,  159  fn.  5.  [The  territorial  jurisdiction  of  a  Wa-li 
is  called  a  "  Wi-la-i-at."] 

A  province  of  Najd,  p.  32  f.n.  i.  [Was/mt,  meaning  tattoo- 
ing, is  a  well-known  word  ;  and  some  say  that  washm  in  this 


GLOSSARIAL  INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


197 


Wasm 
WA-Tl 


sense,  and  the  proper  name  Washm,  mean,  in  the  first  instance, 
spreading,  as  e.g.  verdure  does.] 

V.  Au-SAM. 

{AcciLstovied  to  the  saddle^  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al 
Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 


Y 


YA-Btr 
Ya'-kitb    . 
Ya-ria-ma 
Ya-mA-n1  . 

YA-MA-Nt . 

Yam-bu'   . 


Yar-bu' 


Yath-rib 
Yaum 
Ya-zi-d1  . 


A  kind  of  horse,  p.  136  et  fn.  2. 

"Jacob,"  p.  106. 

A  province  of  Najd,  pp.  32  fn.  i,  42,  43. 

A  Yemenite,  or  native  of  Yemen,  p.  97. 

The  Arab  shoe,  p.  97  f  n.  4. 

[  The  welling  up  of  water.]  The  port  and  harbour,  con- 
nected with  an  inland  group  of  villages  (the  old  "  Yan-bu' "), 
where  steamers  touch  for  Medina,  pp.  10,  29.  From  Yam-bu' 
to  Medina,  it  is  about  ten  days  for  caravans. 

The  jerboa,  p.  95.  [Up  to  the  year  of  writing,  considerable 
numbers  of  these  rodents  burrowed  in  the  desert  round  Bagh- 
dad. Their  principal  feeding  time  was  after  sunrise.  Owing 
to  their  power  of  jumping  and  doubling,  they  were  safe  on 
the  open  plain  from  the  smartest  terriers.  A  recent  overflow 
of  the  Tigris  has  apparently  destroyed  them.] 

The  oasis  of ,  p.  loi. 

Day,  or  a  day,  p.  127. 

Travellers  in  the  Mosul  district  hear  with  surprise  of  a  cer- 
tain sect  of  "  Devil-worshippers,"  but  such  designations  should 
not  be  taken  for  more  than  they  are  worth.  The  "  Yazidis  " 
of  Sin-jar  (p.  6)  are  pagan  Kurds  of  the  mountains,  among 
whom,  naturally,  there  are  traces  of  the  old  Persian  religion, 
and  especially  of  the  Persian  dualism.  Approved  books, 
by  men  still  living,  exist  in  Europe,  in  which  the  power 
of  Satan  is  depicted  as  rivalling  that  of  the  Almighty ; 
and  the  same  conception  comes  forth  into  distinct  shape 
among  the  Yazidis.  The  ancient  Iranian  name  "Yazd" 
represents  for  them  the  "  good  god,"  while  their  clear  recog- 
nition of  the  devil  is  evidently  a  shred  from  the  system 
of  Zoroaster.  They  worship  the  principle  of  Good  through 
several  of  the  appearances  of  Nature,  notably  the  Sun, 
or  light,  and  water.  We  write  this  note  in  the  midst  of 
these  primitive  people  ;  and  one  of  them  who  is  with  us 
never  fails,  on  observing  the  sun  rise,  to  prostrate  himself 
on  the  spot  where  the  first  rays  fall.  In  India  we  have 
seen  Rajput  princes  perform  the  same  act  of  reverence  to 
a  common  reading-lamp  when  it  chanced  to  be  carried  into 
the  room.  The  Yazidis  of  Sin-jar  consist  of  about  2000 
families,  distributed  in  extremely  sequestered  hamlets.    Their 


398 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


Ya-zI-DI — continued. 


speech  is  one  of  the  numerous  dialects  of  Kurd!.  Other 
bodies  of  Yazidis  are  scattered  over  Syria.  The  "A-mir" 
of  the  community  resides  at  the  village  of  Ba-adh-ra,  a  day's 
ride  from  Mosul.  Near  Ba-adh-ra  is  the  "  sacred  valley " 
which  contains  the  shrine,  or  perhaps  tomb,  of  "  Shekh 
A'di."  If  this  be  a  "  temple,"  it  is  the  only  "  house  of  God  " 
which  the  sect  possesses.  The  ceremonies  performed  at  the 
annual  festival  there  have  been  described  by  Layard,  v.  his 
Nineveh  and  Babylon,  ch.  iv.  We  cannot  pretend  to  add 
anything  to  so  full  and  graphic  an  account.  The  Yazidis 
are  in  the  habit  of  informing  both  the  Osmanli  officials  and 
European  travellers  that  they  possess  a  revealed  book  re- 
sembling Al  Kur-an  ;  but  we  have  not  been  able  to  verify 
this  statement.^  Their  chief  religious  treasure  is  the  brass 
image  of  a  bird,  called  "  Malik  Ta-us,"  ^  which  Layard  saw 
and  sketched.  Four  of  these  objects  are  in  their  possession. 
Layard  says  that  they  do  not  look  upon  the  image  "as  an 
idol,  but  as  a  symbol  or  banner."  However  this  may  be, 
"  Malik  Ta-us  "  is  greatly  honoured  by  them — not  the  only 
instance  of  a  bird-figure  appearing  where  those  of  quadrupeds 
and  reptiles  are  absent. 

The  Yazidis,  like  the  Nepalese  Gurkhas,  are  natural 
soldiers,  mountain-made,  and  endowed  with  the  hardy  habits 
of  a  temperate  climate.  Down  to  about  50  years  ago  the 
Porte  enforced  its  conscription  among  them,  on  the  grounds 
that,  as  they  belonged  to  no  recognised  non-Muslim  sect, 
they  must  be  of  the  Muslim.  With  a  fine  inconsistency,  their 
children  were,  however,  held  to  be  "Ka-firs,"  and  therefore 
lawful  objects  of  sale.^  These  wrongs  were  not  righted  till 
after  the  Sin-jar  range  had  witnessed  scenes  of  blood- 
shed. At  the  present  time  (1891)  the  Yazidis  are  prosperous 
and  contented  ;  but  their  safety  from  Turkish  persecution 
chiefly  depends  on  England,  and  on  the  power  and  inclina- 
tion of  Her  Majesty's  Embassy  at  Constantinople  to  cover 
them  unofficially  with  the  shield  of  its  protection. 


1  Since  the  above  was  written,  the  traveller  Mr  Parry,  we 
learn,  has  brought  to  England  extracts  from  a  sacred  book, 
entitled  "The  Jal-wa,"  found  by  him  in  the  possession 
of  the  Yazidis. 

"  "Malik"  apparently  is  the  ancient  title  familiar  to  us  as 
"  Moloch"  ;  while  "ta-ils"  is  an  Aryan  name  for  the  pea- 
cock. Layard  says  that  the  image  of  "King  Peacock "  (on 
which  he  "  could  see  no  traces  of  inscription  ")  is  "  more  like 
an  Indian  or  Mexican  idol  than  a  cock  or  a  peacock." 

'  As  determining,  in  theory  at  least,  the  attitude  of  El 
Is-LAM  towards  slavery,  two  authoritative  passages  may  be 
quoted.    One  is  the  text  in  S.  xlix.  of  Al  Kur-an,  meaning, 

Truly  believers  alone  a7'e  brothers. 
And  the  other  is  the  "  Saying, " 

The  Muslim  shall  not  be  sold ;  shall  not  be  bought. 

In  considering  the  spread  of  Islamism,  it  is  right  to  assign 
all  due  prominence  to  conquest ;  but  we  must  not  overlook 


the  effects  resulting  from  the  brotherhood  tenet.  The  "  for- 
ayers  of  the  morning  "  appear  on  the  scene  only  occasionally; 
the  fact  that  "  conversion  "  generally  involves  social  eleva- 
tion is  an  energetic  agent  which  is  always  operating. 
There  is,  however,  another  side  to  the  account.  It  follows 
from  the  equalisation  before  Allah  of  all  the  Muslim,  (l) 
that  there  are  many  inferior  kinds  of  service  which  no 
"believer"  will  e-xact  from  a  "brother  believer"  ;  and  (2) 
that  outside  of  El  Islam  there  is  neither  law  nor  safety.  In 
towns  like  Baghdad,  there  are  plenty  of  non-Muslim  natives 
to  open  when  required  the  public  and  private  cesspools. 
The  Arabs  of  the  desert,  of  course,  have  no  such  work  to 
perform ;  and  yet  even  they  spare  no  pains  to  procure 
African  drudges.  If  ever  India  should  fail  to  yield  races 
which  devote  themselves,  hereditarily,  to  conservancy  duties, 
our  countrymen  there  will  have  the  question  of  imported 
labour  forced  upon  them  in  a  new  and  serious  aspect. 


GLOSSARIAL   INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


399 


Yemen 


Ytr-Nus 
Yu-sha' 

YU-SUF 


The  "  Arabia  Felix  "  of  Ptolemy  and  other  ancients.  Pp. 
19,  26-10  passim,  97  et  f.n.  4.  "Arabia  Felix"  was  a  mere 
mistranslation.  The  primary  idea  contained  in  Yemen  is  tlie 
right,  or  the  right  hand ;  and  the  meaning  of  aiispiciousness  is 
secondary  and  figurative.  In  Im-ra-u  '1  Kais'  poem,  fa-min 
is  used,  as  it  is  still  in  Arabic,  to  express  an  oath,  perhaps 
from  the  part  which  the  right  hand  performs  in  making  it.^ 
In  all  probability  the  idea  anciently  enwrapped  in  the  name 
Yemen  had  something  to  do  with  the  right  or  the  right  hand 
in  sun  and  moon  worship,  or  in  the  offering  of  sacrifice  and 
incense. 

"Jonah."  Often  alluded  to  in  Al  Kur-an.  Pp.  100  f.n. 
I,  270. 

"Joshua,"  p.  100  et  fn.  i. 

"Joseph,"  p.  106. 


Zab 


Za-bib 
Zaf-fa 

Za-gros 


Za-hi 
Zaid 

[Az]  Zai-tI 


The  Tigris  in  its  passage  through  north-eastern  El  I'rak 
receives  the  snows  of  the  Kurd  mountains  from  two  con- 
siderable affluents,  respectively  called,  in  books  and  maps, 
the  Greater  and  the  Lesser  Zab  or  Di-ab  (p.  82).  The  people 
living  on  the  banks  of  the  rivers  bestow,  as  usual,  their  own 
local  names  on  different  portions  of  them. 

Dried  grapes  or  raisins,  p.  119  fn.  i. 

The  procession  which  accompanies  a  bride  to  her  hus- 
band's tent  or  dwelling,  pp.   148,   150. 

The  west  Persian  frontier  Highlands  are  sometimes  col- 
lectively termed  the  "  Zagros  mountains"  (pp.  79,  282  fn.  i)  ; 
but  this  Greek  appellation  applies  properly  only  to  the  range 
skirting  the  plains  of  I'-rak  A'-ra-bi,  and  separated  by  the 
Kar-kha  river-valley  from  the  more  easterly  Lur-istan  and 
Khuz-istan  systems. 

The  name  of  a  strain  of  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  23s  col.  vi. 

[Increase.]  Name  of  the  Prophet's  favourite  amanuensis, 
V.  Note  to  Al  KuR-AN,  in  List  of  Works  Consulted,  p.  xiv  of 
prefixes  of  the  volume. 

[From  zait,  the  oil,  or  essential  parts,  of  the  sai-tlxn  or 
olive-tree.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in  Al  Kham-SA,  Table 
p.  235  col.  v. 


'  We  have  failed  to  discover  in  Arabia  any  traces  of  the 
practice  described  in  Gen.  xxiv.  9,  whereby  Abraham's 
servant  put  his  hand  under  his  master's  thigh,  and  sware  to 
him;  but  in  divers  other  ways  the  Arab's  right  hand  per- 
forms  the   same  function.     In   his  marriage   ceremony,   in 


which,  by  the  way,  tlie  presence  of  the  principals  is  dispensed 
with,  the  proxies  of  the  bride  and  bridegroom  come  forward 
at  the  proper  moments,  and  place  the  right  hand  of  the  one 
on  that  of  the  other,  in  ratification  for  their  respective  prin- 
cipals of  the  obligations  which  are  then  contracted. 


400 
Zal-la     . 

Zam-zam  . 

Zl-A-DA  . 
ZiB-NA  . 
ZiPPORAH 


ZO-BA' 

ZU-BAID 
ZU-BAIR 


ZU-HAIR 


ZULLA 

[For  Zu-LA.] 


GLOSSARIAL    INDEX  AND   SUPPLEMENT. 


The  name  of  a  strain  in  the  stock  of  Ku-HAI-LAN,  Table 
p.  235  col.  vi. 

The  well  within  the  sacred  precincts  at  Mecca  ;  the  deep 
shaft  of  which  is  inclosed  in  a  marble-paved  building,  p.  1 16. 

\_Excess,  as  of  speed,  or  beauty.]  The  name  of  a  strain  in 
Al  Kham-sa,  Table  p.  235  col.  i. 

{^Pushing  ou(.]  The  name  of  a  horde  of  the  Aeniza,  Table 
p.  121. 

P.  113  fn.  3.  [On  the  principle  that  all  words  which  occur 
in  the  Biblical  literature  are  to  be  interpreted  from  Hebrew, 
this  name  means  Iz'tt/e  bird,'^  lit.  zvhistlmg,  twittering.  In 
our  day  "Dha-fi-ra"  is  a  common  name  among  the  Arab 
women  ;  but  the  comparative  philology  of  the  two  names  is 
a  complex  matter.] 

The  name  of  a  confederation  of  tribes  in  El  I'rak,  which 
claim  kindred  with  the  Sham^mar,  pp.  122,  158  fn.  i. 

A  nation  of  Babylonia,  p.  84  f  n.  i. 

\_Strength,  cleverness.']  A  modern  Arab  town  which  refugees 
from  Najd  planted,  in  the  troublous  times  of  Wahabyism,  on 
the  site  of  ancient  Bussorah.  Most  of  the  inhabitants  of  Zu- 
bair  are  engaged  directly  or  indirectly  in  the  horse  trade. 
Pp.  32,  83,  228,  300. 

[Diminutive  of  sahr,  a  flower  or  blossom.]  The  name  of 
one  of  the  poets  of  the  Seven  Mu-a'l-la-kat.  Translations 
from  his  poem,  pp.  130  fn.  4,  145  fn.  i. 

A  village  near  the  head  of  Annesley  Bay,  on  the  African 
coast  of  the  Red  Sea,  pp.  99  f n.  4,  192  fn.  i. 


■  U's-fur,"  the  common  Arabic  word  for  a  sparrow,  comes  from  the  same  root  as  "Zipporah. 


INDEX    II. 


INDEX     OF     SUBJECTS. 


Abraham,  his  setting  no  wine  before  the  angels  who 
visited  him  quoted  in  connection  with  the  abstin- 
ence of  the  desert  Arabs  from  intoxicants,  52  ; 
holds  an  important  place  in  Arabian  story,  loi  ; 
common  belief  among  the  Arabs  that  he  was  one 
of  them,  103  ;  the  history  of,  noticed,  108  et  seq.  ; 
legends  regarding  his  hospitality,  114^/  f.n.  i  ;  re- 
ferences to,  in  Al  Kur-An,  more  copious  than  in 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  115;  his  connection  with 
the  Ka'ba  of  Mecca,  ib.  et  f  ns.  2  and  3  ;  according 
to  Al  Kur-an,  Ishmael,  and  not  Isaac,  the  son 
whom  he  was  commanded  to  sacrifice,  115,  116; 
tradition  that  the  Chaldeans  attempted  to  burn, 
159  et  f.n.  6. 

Abstemiousness,  the,  of  the  Arabian  horse,  191. 

Abyssinia,  horses  left  in,  by  the  British  expedition,  28 
eti.Xi.  I  ;  large  portions  of,  colonised  from  S.  Arabia, 
99  et  f.ns.  3,  4. 

Abyssinians,  the,  have  lost  the  art  of  training  the 
elephant,  28  f.n.  3. 

Acquired  characters,  latest  theories  regarding,  242  et 
f  n.  2. 

Adulterated  breeds  of  horses,  the,  in  Sha-mi-ya  and 
Al  Ja-zi-ra,  271. 

Africa,  points  of  resemblance  between  Arabia  and, 
99  f  n.  4. 

African  elephant,  the,  carried  into  Yemen,  28. 

Ages  of  horses,  the,  compared  with  ages  of  men,  1S5. 

Agriculture  in  El  I'rak,  79,  So  et  f.n.  3,  85. 

"  Akbar,"  the  Arab  race-horse  (with  illustration),  257 
f.n.  I. 

Aleppo,  carrying  of  Arabia  as  far  north  as,  by  a 
fourteenth  -  century  geographer,  20 ;  the  Darley 
Arabian  bought  by  a  resident  of,  165  et  f  n.  2 ; 
Mr  Skene  consul  at,  212  ;  Mr  Henderson  consul  at, 
249 ;  as  a  starting-point  for  the  horse-purchaser,  291. 

Amulets,  use  of,  among  the  desert  Arabs,  136  et  f.n.  i. 

Angora  flocks  of  Sin-jar,  the,  133  et  f  n.  4. 


Animals,  comparative  degrees  of  intelligence  in  the 
different  kinds  of  domesticated,  195  f.n.  2. 

Antelope,  the,  of  Arabia,  8,  74,  145  et  fn.  i,  152. 

Arab  horses,  collections  of,  made  by  Muhammad  ib7iu 
'r  Ra-shid  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  45  ;  by  the  King  of 
Wiirtemberg,  219;  by  A'b-bis  Pisha,  Viceroy  of 
Egypt,  ib.  et  f.n.  3  ;  by  Mr  W.  S.  Blunt,  220  ;  by 
A-mir  Fai-sal  of  Najd,  250. 

Arabia,  the  intensity  of  its  climate,  and  the  effects 
thereof,  6  ;  characteristics  of  the  surface  of,  8,  9  ; 
its  capabilities  as  a  nursery  of  horses,  8  et  seq.  ; 
Burckhardt  quoted  on  this  point,  9  ;  Lane's  sugges- 
tion regarding  etymology  of  the  name,  19  f.n.  2  ; 
delimitation  of,  19  et  seq.;  maps  of,  22  et  fns.  i 
and  2  ;  sketch  of  peninsular,  25-64  ;  the  treatment  of 
travellers  in,  33  et  f.n.  2  ;  extract  from  old  Ara- 
bian poet  illustrative  of  climate  of,  49  ;  list  of  the 
nomadic  races  of  Arabia  proper,  59  f  n.  2  ;  from 
very  early  times,  occupied  by  two  more  or  less  dis- 
tinct peoples,  97 ;  the  central  portion  of,  was  but 
slightly  affected  by  the  historical  vicissitudes  of  the 
empire  of  Yemen,  ib.  ;  the  prevailing  classification 
of  the  existing  nations  of,  98,  99;  article  in  Ency. 
Brit,  on,  99  fn.  2,  210-212;  points  of  resemblance 
between,  and  Africa,  99  f  n.  4  ;  and  between  the 
Arabs  and  numerous  African  peoples,  ib.  ;  preva- 
lence anciently  of  Jewish  settlements  and  kingdoms 
within,  100,  loi  ;  hints  to  travellers  in,  149  <?/  fn.  i, 
292-295. 

Arabian  horse,  the.     See  Horse,  the  Arabian. 

Arabic  and  other  foreign  words,  glossarial  index  and 
supplement  to  all  references  to,  used  in  this  work, 
325-400. 

Arabic  language,  method  of  transcribing  Arabic  words 
used  throughout  this  work,  ix,  x  of  prefixes  of 
volume  ;  its  love  of  personification  illustrated,  34 
f.n.  I  ;  antiquity  of,  104,  105  ;  Lane's  view  on  this 
point,  105  f.n.  I  ;  currency  among  the  desert  Arabs 
of  many  words  unknown  to  grammarians,  ib.  ; 
place  -  names   and    names   of  persons   among  the 


3   E 


402 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


Arabs  considered,  105-10S  ;  hints  on  the  study  of, 
292  iV  f.n.  I  ;  words  imitative  of  sounds,  221  f.n.  i, 
295  ;  words  lent  to,  and  words  borrowed  by,  Index 
i-,  345-346  f.n. 
Arabs,  the,  broadly  divisible  into  the  Bedouin  or 
nomadic  and  the  settled  Arabs,  15  ;  from  earliest 
ages  have  had  an  instinct  for  emigration,  20 ; 
their  skill  and  enterprise  as  navigators,  21  et  f.n. 
I  ;  cannot  on  the  whole  claim  to  rank  as  scien- 
tific breeders  of  animals,  22  ;  their  origin,  92  et 
seq.  ;  their  claim  to  "  purity  "  of  blood,  93  et  seq.  ; 
extreme  importance  attached  to  this  view  by,  94  ; 
inter-resemblance  of,  95;  traces  of  "breeding" 
in  their  pose  and  figure,  ib. ;  their  blood  seems 
to  possess  a  special  virtue,  ib.  ;  the  northern  are 
mainly  nomads,  100;  but  masses  of  the  southern 
also  display  the  wandering  habit,  ib. ;  the  connec- 
tion, anciently,  between  the  Jews  and,  ib.,  loi  ; 
and  between  their  respective  religions,  loi  ;  their 
physical  aspect,  103,  104 ;  their  speech,  104-108 ; 
the  epithets  "Yemenite"  and  "  Ishmaelite,"  con- 
sidered from  the  racial  view-point,  \\Z  et  seq. ;  horse- 
racing  not  practised  among,  131  et  f.n.  3,  248  f.n.  i  ; 
illiterate  condition  of,  132,  247  ;  the  condition  of 
women  among,  134  et^.w.  i  ;  the  sport  of  hawking 
among,  152  et  f.n.  2;  their  love  for  their  horses, 
157-166;  how  the  influence  of  Al  Kur-an  tends  to 
develop  this  sentiment,  158  et  seq. ;  recognise  the 
necessity  of  shoeing  their  horses,  179;  management 
of  their  horses,  196 ;  how  they  name  their  horses, 

237- 

Arabs,  the  Bedouin.     See  Bedouin  Arabs. 

Arabs,  the  settled,  of  El  I'rak,  83,  84  et  f.n.  i,  85  ; 
horse-breeding  among,  146-154;  their  saddle  and 
stirrup,  147,  148  ;  the  place  of  the  horse  among, 
166. 

Arabs,  the  town- dwelling,  why  despised  by  the 
Bedouin,  133,  134;  as  horse-breeders,  146  et  seq.  ; 
their  fantasia  described,  150;  influence  of  Al  Kur- 
an  upon,  160,  161 ;  how  they  were  affected  by  the 
Puritanical  rigour  of  the  Wahabite  system,  162-164; 
admire  large  horses,  197  ;  remarks  on  the  theory 
that  the  stallion,  more  than  the  mare,  transmits  the 
qualities  of  the  breed,  230. 

Argamak  horse,  the,  274  et  f.n.  i. 

Armour  and  weapons  of  Arabia,  104  f.n.  i. 

Arrack,  the  sale  of,  permitted  by  the  Ottoman  Govern- 
ment, 119;  origin  of  the  word,  ib.  f.n.  I. 

Aryan  and  Semitic  languages,  error  of  deriving  one 
from  the  other.  Index  i.,  345-346  f.n. 

"  A-sil,"  the  winner  of  certain  races  for  Arab  horses  at 
Newmarket  and  Sandown,  249. 

Ass,  the  domestic,  of  Arabia,  22  ;  the  white,  of  Al 
Ha-sa,  31  ;  merits  of  the,  variously  estimated  in  the 
East,  159;  the  wild,  8,  74,  75. 

Australasia,  an  Australian  writer  quoted  on  the  im- 
portance of  flowing  water  to  horse-breeders  in,  9  f.n. 
I  ;  the  horses  of,  will  perform  long  journeys  on  a 
grass  diet,  11  ;  maritime  districts  of,  found  unsuit- 
able for  horse-breeding,  26  ;  Arabian  stallions  in, 
214;  the  blood-horse  of,  quite  modern,  ib.  f.n.  i; 
large  sums  paid  for  race-horses  in,  216  f.ns.  i,  2. 

Australian  horses,  "Kingcraft,"  186;  "Jorrocks,"  ib. 
f.n.  I  ;  the  origin  of  their  habit  of  "buck-jumping," 


191  ;  their  uncertain  temper,  198 ;  an  Australian 
colt  by  "Chester,"  195,  241,  242,  273;  occasionally 
mistaken  for  Arabians,  303. 


Baghdad,  13 ;  immunity  of,  from  rabies  and  hydro- 
phobia, 33  f.n.  2  ;  the  learned  men  of,  98  ;  the  Jews 
of,  100;  horse-breeding  in  and  around,  127  ;  as 
a  horse-mart,  211,  296  ;  the  difficulty  of  exercising 
race-horses  in,  275  ;  horses  bred  in,  have  no  true 
pedigrees,  279. 

Bathing,  method  of,  practised  by  the  Kurdish  women 
of  Sin-jar,  5. 

Beatson,  the  late  Gen.  W.  F.,  and  "  Beatson's  Horse," 
alluded  to,   188. 

Bedouin  Arabs,  the,  etymology  and  definition  of  the 
name,  15  et  seq.\  are  of  composite  origin,  16; 
delight  in  trading  enterprises,  ib.,  17  ;  a  strict 
demarcation  of  their  limits  impossible,  18  ;  their 
love  of  Najd,  32,  38  ;  have  sound  reasons  for  their 
exclusiveness,  33  ;  how  they  contend  against  the 
want  of  water,  48  et  seq. ;  the  four  seasons  recog- 
nised by,  50  f.n.  2  ;  the  question  of  their  abstinence 
from  wine  considered,  52  et  seq.,  119  ;  exoduses  of, 
out  of  Najd,  62-64  ;  hints  afforded  as  to  the  history 
of,  by  their  proper  names,  105  et  seq.  ;  qualities 
personified  in  their  names,  107  f.n.  3  ;  their  hospi- 
tality, 114  ;  how  they  have  preserved  their  indepen- 
dence, 119  ;  as  horse-breeders,  121-145  j  table  of  the 
divisions  of  the  Ae-ni-za  nation  of,  121  ;  the  divi- 
sions of  the  Sham-mar  nation,  122  et  f.n.  5  ;  different 
septs  of,  have  different  standards  of  horse-breeding, 
123  et  seq.  ;  their  method  of  conducting  warfare  and 
foray,  126-128  ;  their  condition  as  regards  religion, 
128,  129,  160;  Dr  Wallin  quoted  on  this  point,  129 
f.n.  I  ;  their  fatalism,  nature  of,  129,  130  eti.ns.  2-4; 
their  very  ancient  custom  of  tying  a  dead  man's 
mare  or  camel  beside  his  grave,  130;  despise  book- 
learning,  132,  133;  desert  costume,  134;  the  poeti- 
cal temperament  of,  135  et  f.n.  4  ;  the  chief  feature 
of  their  practice  of  horse  -  breeding  is  faith  in 
blood,  137,  231,  267  ;  their  fanaticism  on  this  point 
renders  them  too  unmindful  oi  form,  138;  their 
horsemanship,  138-140;  their  riding-halter,  140, 
141;  saddle,  141, 144;  spur,  142;  a  poet's  description 
of  their  horses  and  horsemanship,  143;  their  natural 
gravity,  163  ;  but  slightly  affected  by  Wahabyism, 
ib.  ;  their  love  of  tobacco,  164  et  f.n.  2  ;  how  the 
possession  of  a  mare  raises  the  nomad's  social  posi- 
tion, 165  ;  their  acuteness,  184;  their  consideration 
for  their  horses,  189,  221  ;  their  manner  of  feasting, 
191  et  f.n.  2  ;  are  generally  short-lived,  193  ;  their 
reluctance  to  part  with  a  mare,  215  ^/jt'^.  ;  instances 
of  their  nevertheless  selling  their  best  mares  to 
strangers,  217,  218  ;  in  pedigrees  they  give  the  mare 
pre-eminence,  230  et  seq.  ;  how  they  name  their 
horses,  237  ;  how  they  preserve  the  purity  of  the 
strains,  241,  242,  248  ;  in  their  own  deserts,  will 
truly  declare  all  they  know  of  a  horse's  pedigree, 
247,  248  ;  their  horse  knowledge  a  national  posses- 
sion, 254;  their  superstitions  regarding  colour  and 
markings,  264  ;  their  trade  with  pedlars,  294  f.n.  2. 


INDEX    OF  SUBJECTS. 


403 


Bedouin  supper,  description  of  a,  191. 

Bedouin  women,  tlieir  duties  and  tlieir  dress,  127  et 
f.n.  2;  the  measure  of  liberty  allowed  to,  134;  the 
tending  of  the  mares  by,  189. 

Bengal  Cup,  running  of  the  Arab  horses  "  Crab  "  and 
"  Oranmore"  in  the,  207,  208. 

Bible  narratives,  recurrence  of  very  many  of  the,  in 
Al  Kur-an,  ioi. 

Bible,  The,  references  to,  27  et  f.n.  3,  41,  43  f.n.  i, 
44  et  f.n.  I,  49  f.n.  4,  52  et  f.ns.  4  and  5,  64  et  f.n.  2, 
65  et  f.ns.  I  and  2,  66  f.n.  i,  70,  74  et  f.n.  i,  78  et  f.n. 
I,  So  f.n.  3,  93  f.n.  2,  94  f.n.  I,  98  f.n.  3,  104  f.n.  3, 
109,  no  f.n.  I,  III  ^/ f.n.  2,  112,  113  f.ns.  3  and  4, 
lis  f.n.  4,  117,  130  f.ns.  2  and  5,  134,  157,  158  «/ f.n. 
I,  159  et  f.ns.  I,  2,  3,  and  6,  178  f.n.  2,  226  f.n.  4,  227 
et  f.ns.  I  and  3,  332  et  f.n.  2,  238  f.n.  2,  265  et  f.n.  2, 
378  et  f.n.  I,  399  et  f.n.  2. 

"Bishopping,"  303  f.n.  i. 

Bishops,  in  early  times  in  England,  rode  mares,  232 
f.n.  2. 

Bits  and  bitting,  141  f.n.  i,  150,  151  (with  illustra- 
tions) ;  the  Mameluke  bit,  150  et  f.n.  i. 

Blackwood's  l\Iagazi7te,  reference  to  observations  of 
an  early  English  traveller  in  Mid-Lothian  in,  6  f.n. 
3  ;  quotation  from  an  article  in,  on  the  Turku-mans 
and  their  horses,  272. 

Blaine,  Delaberre,  quoted  regarding  longevity  in 
horses,   184  f.n.  2. 

"  Blitz,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  308. 

Blood-horse,  meajiing  of  term,  246  f.n.  4. 

Blood,  purity  of,  faith  of  the  Bedouin  Arabs  in,  137, 
231  ;  the  winning  of  races  not  an  infallible  proof 
of,  248  et  f.n.  I  ;  the  tendency  of  the  Arab  horse- 
dealers,  when  they  engage  in  racing  in  India,  to 
persevere  with  worthless  animals  which  are  of  fancy 
strains  of  blood,  307. 

Blunt,  Lady  Anne,  8,  39,  149  f.n.  i  ;  her  Pilgrimage 
to  Najd,  37  ;  her  description  of  the  Nu-fudh,  38  ; 
her  remarks  on  the  scarcity  of  horses  in  Najd  con- 
sidered, 58  ;  her  estimate  of  the  numbers  of  the 
Ae-ni-za  and  the  Sham-mar,  63  et  f.n.  i  ;  on  the 
effect  of  the  spring  rains  in  Sha-mi-ya,  68  ;  on  Der 
as  a  horse-market,  68,  69 ;  her  visit  to  Shekh  Fa-ris, 
72  f.n.  I  ;  on  the  religion  of  the  Bedouin,  129. 

Blunt,  Mr  W.  S.,  favours  the  theory  that  Arabia  was 
the  primeval  home  of  the  horse,  7,  8  ;  praise  of 
the  Arabian  horse  by,  at  Newmarket,  169;  on  the 
Arabian  as  a  race-horse,  206,  207  ;  remarks  on  his 
description  of  desert  horse-breeding,  207  f.n.  i  ;  on 
the  purchase  of  Arabian  mares,  218  ;  his  experi- 
ments in  the  naturalisation  of  Arabians  in  England, 
220 ;  quotation  from  a  pedigree  table  in  Bedouin 
Ti-ibes  of  t/ie  Euphrates,  246;  chose  his  mares  and 
horses  from  the  Bedouin  tribes  in  Sha-mi-ya,  270. 

Bombay,  the  best  and  greatest  market  in  the  world 
for  Arabian  horses,  299  et  f.n.  i  ;  the  Arab  horse- 
mart  of,  described  (illustration),  300-302  ;  purchas- 
ing Arabian  horses  in,  302-314;  its  climate,  315. 

"  Bombproof,"  the  Indian  stud-bred  horse,  record  of, 
187  f.n.  2. 

Bones  of  the  horse,  the,  anatomical  and  horseman's 
names  for,  contrasted,  144  f.n.  3. 

Bower,  Colonel,  owner  of  "Child  of  the  Islands," 
quoted,  198,  306. 


Breeders  of  animals,  the  Arabs  cannot  claim  title  of 
scientific,  22. 

Bridle,  the,  of  the  Bedouin  Arabs  (with  illustration), 
140,  141. 

British  Association,  a  suggestion  to  the,  105. 

British  Isles,  the  climate  of,  favours  the  Arabian 
horse,  316. 

"  Bucephalas,"  reference  to,  p.  vi  of  prefixes  of  volume 
et  f.n.  3. 

Buck-jumping,  origin  of  the  habit  of,  in  Australian 
horses,  191. 

Budge,  Dr  E.  A.  W.,  British  Museum,  his  visit  to 
Sin-Jar,  6  f.n.  3. 

Buffon  cited  on  the  point  of  wild  horses  in  Arabia,  7. 

Burckhardt,  references  to,  5  f.n.  i,  36,  29,  291, 
312  f.n.  I  ;  on  the  horse-yield  of  Arabia,  9;  the 
extent  of  his  travels  in  Arabia,  10  ;  on  the  climate 
of  Yemen,  26,  27  ;  on  the  horses  of  Yemen,  26,  27, 
29  ;  and  of  Al  Hi-jaz,  29  ;  on  the  numbers  of  the 
Ae-ni-za,  63  f.n.  i  ;  on  the  religion  of  the  Bedouin, 
12S  ;  on  the  traders  who  enter  the  desert,  294  f.n.  2. 

Burton,  the  late  Sir  R.,  cited,  115,  160  f.n.  3  ;  transla- 
tion of  S.  Al  FA-ti-ha  by,  135  f.n.  3  ;  his  costume 
on  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  149  f.n.  i. 

Bussorah,  its  fertility  as  a  date-garden,  74  ;  a  good 
starting-point  for  the  horse-purchaser,  292  ;  facili- 
ties for  transport  of  Arab  horses  from,  to  India,  315. 

Buyer  of  horses,  qualifications  of  a  successful,  35  et 
f.n.  2,  289,  290. 

Buying  horses.     See  under  Horse,  the  Arabian. 

"Byerly  Turk,"  the,  138  f.n.  i,  165,  206. 


Cairo,  sale  of  A'b-bas  Pasha's  stud  of  Arabians  at, 
219  f.n.  3  ;  may  become  a  considerable  market  for 
Arabians,  299. 

Camel,  the,  Huf-huf  in  Al  Ha-sa  as  a  market  for,  31  ; 
in  Oman,  33;  Arab  life  impossible  without,  55;  a 
high  authority  cited  on  the  primeval  home  of,  ib. 
f.n.  I ;  the  Arab's  love  for,  56,  57,  394  ;  its  money 
value  in  Najd,  57  ;  its  part  in  desert  warfare,  60, 
61  ;  only  true  beast  of  travel  in  the  desert,  76;  its 
uses  in  early  times,  159;  limited  intelligence  of, 
195  f.n.  3  ;  its  money  value  in  Sha-mi-ya,  270  ;  the 
purchasing  power  of,  varies,  ib.  f.n.  i  ;  Damascus  a 
good  market  for,  293,  294. 

Camel-brands,  the,  used  by  the  Arabs  (with  illustra- 
tion), 67  et  f.n.  3.     See  also  Au-sam,  in  Index  i. 

Campbell,  the  late  Dr,  of  Mysore,  306. 

Canine  madness  unknown  in  Baghdad,  33  f.n.  2  ;  pre- 
valence of,  in  India,  ib. 

Cape,  the,  purchasing  of  horses  at,  35  f.n.  2. 

"  Captain  White  "  (the  name  of  a  horse),  sagacity  of, 
194. 

Castration  of  horses,  remarks  on  the,  279  et  seq. 

Cavalry,  the  uses  of,  indicated  by  Al  Kur-an,  158; 
Egypt  as  a  school  for,  239. 

Centaur,  myth  of  the,  used  as  an  illustration,  238(7^  f.n.  i. 

Chaldeans,  tradition  regarding  attempted  burning  of 
Abraham  by  the,  1 59  et  f.n.  6. 

Character  of  the  Arabian  horse.  See  under  Horse, 
the  Arabian. 


404 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


Chargers,  the  Prophet  Muhammad's,  230  f.n.  2. 

Chess  among  the  Arabs,  54  f.n.  2. 

"  Chest-founder  "  v.  "  foot-founder,"  the  question  of, 
181  ei  seq. 

Chestnut  colour,  in  horses,  264,  265  ;  English  racing- 
stock  practically  become  bay  and,  267. 

Cheyne,  the  Rev.  Dr,  quoted  on  Jewish  circumcision, 

113- 

"  Child  of  the  Islands,"  the  Arabian  race-horse,  198 
et  f  n.  2,  306. 

Chivalry,  the  influence  of,  on  horse-breeding  in  Eng- 
land, 232. 

Circumcision,  practice  of,  among  the  early  Arabs, 
112;  prevalence  of  among  many  savage  and  some 
civilised  peoples,  ib.  f.n.  2  ;  reference  to,  by  Rev. 
Dr  Cheyne,  113  et  fn.  2;  other  authorities  cited 
with  regard  to  its  practice  among  the  Arabs,  ib. 
f.n.  3 ;  not  mentioned  in  Al  Kur-an,  ib.  f  n.  3. 

Cities,  the  perished,  of  the  Euphrates  valley,  65,  66. 

"  Claverhouse,"  author's  Arabian  horse,  history  and 
career  of  (with  full-page  illustration),  1S1-184 ; 
his  lameness  considered  in  reference  to  "  chest- 
founder"  and  "foot-founder,"  182-184. 

Climate,  as  an  element  of  the  general  "  environment," 
regarded  throughout  these  pages  as  a  most  impor- 
tant factor,  1-6,  89;  intensity  and  effect  of  that  of 
Arabia,  6 ;  extract  from  old  Arabian  poet  illustra- 
tive of,  49  ;  of  British  Islands,  suitability  of,  to  the 
Arabian  horse,  316. 

Coach-horses  in  olden  times  spoken  to  from  the 
coach-box,  196  fn.  i. 

Coffee,  comparatively  modern  introduction  of,  into 
Arabia,  no;  traditions  regarding  the  discovery  of 
the  plant  by  the  Arabs,  ib.  f  n.  2  ;  derivation  of 
the  name,  ib. ;  royal  proclamation  against,  on  its 
introduction  into  England,  ib. 

Collins,  Vet.-Surgeon,  quoted,  175,  279. 

Colour  of  the  "  typical  "  Arabian  horse,  question  of 
the,  considered,  260  et  seq. ;  colour  as  an  indication 
of  character,  ib.\  and  as  an  indication  of  breed,  or 
breeding,  265-267. 

Colours,  the,  of  the  Arabian  horse.  Table  of,  262,  263. 

Constitution  of  the  Arabian  horse.  See  under  Horse, 
the  Arabian. 

Consuls,  the  variable  influence  of  in  Asiatic  Turkey 
and  Arabia,  297,  298. 

"  Copenhagen,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  208,  307. 

Coughs  in  the  Arabian  horse,  174. 

Courage,  the,  of  the  Arabian  horse,  193  et  seq. 

Cox,  Mr,  of  Sydney,  and  his  horse  "Yattendon,"  216 
f.n.  I. 

"Crab,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  his  race  with  "Oran- 
more,"  207,  208. 

Crooked  fore-legs,  prevalence  of,  in  Arab  horses  (with 
illustration),  200. 

Crossing  the  Arabian  with  other  breeds.  See  under 
Horse,  the  Arabian. 

Cuneiform  Tablets,  the,  of  Tell  el  Amarna,  105  fn.  i. 

Cup-horses,  or  platers,  the  buying  of,  309  et  seq. 

Curb  an  unsoundness  seldom  seen  in  Arab  horses, 
178. 

Curr,  Mr,  on  Australian  horse-pastures,  9  f  n.  i  ; 
extract  from  his  Pure  Saddle-Hojses,  170-72  ;  his 
account  of  "  Jorrocks,"  186  f  n.  i. 


Damascus,  recommended  by  Burckhardt  as  a  market 
for  Arabians,  64,  291 ;  the  Arab's  name  for,  65  ; 
horse-buying  in  the  deserts  round,  271,  272  ;  a  start- 
ing-point for  the  horse-purchaser,  291  ;  a  good 
market  for  camels,  293,  294. 

Dandle  Dinmont  terrier,  history  of  the,  used  to  illus- 
trate difficulty  of  ascertaining  origin  of  breeds  of 
animals,  240;  this  breed  said  to  trace  back  to  a 
mother.,  ib.  f  n.  6 ;  the  colours  of,  more  or  less  fixed, 
266. 

"  Darley  Arabian,"  the,  came  from  the  Ae-ni-za,  63  ; 
from  whom  bought,  in  Queen  Anne's  reign,  by  Mr 
Darley  of  Aleppo,  165  et  f  n.  2,  269,  291  ;  a  certain 
account  of  him  shown  to  be  unsupported,  213  f  n.  i  ; 
probably  a  model  in  respect  of  make  and  sound- 
ness, 219;  locality  in  which  foaled  unknown,  269. 

Darwin  cited,  118  fn.  i,  137,  241,  242,  245,  266  et 
f  n.  2. 

Date,  value  of  the,  as  food  for  men  and  horses,  12  ct 
fn.  I. 

Date-groves  of  Bussorah,  the,  74  ;  of  El  I'rak,  79. 

Daumas,  Gen.,  work  by,  on  the  Arabs  in  Africa,  re- 
ferred to,  161. 

Day,  Mr,  his  Race-horse  in  Training  c^o\.^A,  lyj. 

Defects  of  the  Arabian  horse.  See  under  Horse,  the 
Arabian. 

"  Dervish,"  the  Arabian  horse.     See  Index  i. 

Desert,  etymology  and  definition  of  [he  word,  18,  19. 

Desert  horsemanship,  characteristic  features  of,  138- 
140;  an  Arabian  poet's  description  of,  143  et  fns. 
2-7,  144  et  f  n.  I. 

Desert  horses,  the  trade  in,  211  ;  the  desert  is  continu- 
ally being  stripped  of  its  blood-horses,  213. 

Desert  travelling,  importance  of  the  camel  in,  76. 

Desert  warfare,  61,  108  fn.  3,  124,  126-128;  the  place 
of  the  women  in,  127. 

Dick,  Professor,  of  Edinburgh,  able  to  detect  lame- 
ness in  a  horse  by  ear  alone,  176  fn.  i. 

Diseases,  special,  of  the  Arabian.  See  Horse,  Ara- 
bian, Constittition  of,  also  Treatment  of,  when  ex- 
ported. 

Dods,  Prof  Marcus,  quotation  from  Muhammad, 
Buddha,  and  Christ  by,  as  to  sense  in  which  Mu- 
hammad was  a  Prophet,  4  fn.  i. 

Dog,  the,  how  treated  by  the  Arabs,  ii6  fn.  2. 

Doughty,  Mr,  his  experiences  in  Najd,  33  f  n.  2  ;  his 
estimate  of  the  population  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  39 
f  n.  I ;  his  account  of  Prince  Ban-dar's  accession  to 
Chiefship  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  40  f  n.  i  ;  on  the  ad- 
ministration of  justice  by  Amir  Muhammad,  in  the 
same  province,  43  et  f  n.  3  ;  his  description  of  the 
same  Amir's  stud,  45  ;  his  experience  of  the  scarcity 
of  water  in  Western  Arabia,  51  ;  on  the  numbers  of 
the  U'tai-ba  Bedouin,  59  et  f  n.  2 ;  the  subdivisions  of 
the  Sham-mar  nation  according  to,  122. 

Dress,  the,  of  the  Arabs,  108  et  f.n.  2,  127  f  n.  2. 

Drinking-bouts  of  the  ancient  Arabs,  legendary  lore 
regarding,  53  f  n.  i. 

Dromedary.     See  Camel. 

Durability,  the,  of  the  Arabian  horse,  more  or  less  a 
product  of  high  breeding,  185  ;  qualified  by  method 
of  rearing,  i86£'/fn.  i. 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


405 


Ears  of  Arab  horses;  frequent  presence  of  marks  on, 
312  ;  spread  of,  methods  of  obviating  practised  by 
the  Bedouin  and  other  breeders,  ib. 
East  India  Company,  quality  of  horses  bred  by  the,  187. 
"  Eclipse,"  Lawrence's  explanation,  in  The  Horse,  of 
his  vast  powers,  186  f  n.  i  ;  size  of  his  heart,  when 
weighed  after  death,  referred  to,  243  f  n.  3  ;  possible 
inaccuracy  of  his  pedigree,  247  f  n.  i  ;  his  confor- 
mation, as  shown  in  engraving  in  Sidney's  Book  of 
the  Horse,  recommended  as  a  model  to  buyers  of 
Arabians  for  racing,  257  f  n.    i  ;   marking  in   de- 
scendants of,  266;  his  character  as  a  colt,  275. 
Egypt,  monumental   and   traditional   evidence  as  to 
the  breeding  of  horses  in  ancient,  227  et  f  n.  2  ;  in 
A'li's  time,  a  school  for  cavalry,  239  ;  as  a  market 
for  Arabian  horses,  299. 
Elephant,  the,  imported  into  Yemen  from  Africa,  28  ; 
the  art  of  training,  lost  by  the  Abyssinians,  ib.  f  n.  3  ; 
the  Indian,  instances  of  its  intelligence,  195  fn.  2. 
Elliot,  Major,  owner  of  the  Arab  race-horses  "Euclid" 

and  "  Lanercost,"  309. 
Emigration,  instinct  of  the  Arabs  for,  20. 
Encyclopcedia  Brita7inica,  references  to,  6  f.n.  i,  26  f.n. 
3,  39  f.n.  I,  54  et  f.n.  3,  99  f  ns.  2  and  3,  113  et  f  ns. 
2  and  3,  115  f.n.  4,  210,  239  et  fn.  4,  277  et  f.n.  3, 
2S2  f  n.  2. 
English  Stud-book,  the,  its   beginning  and   history, 

246 ;  probable  inaccuracies  in,  247  et  f n.   i. 
Esau  bin   Curta.s,  his  account  of  the  history  of  the 
Arabian  breed,  228  ;  colt  afterwards  famous  as  "  Re- 
.  venge"  sold  by  him,  270;  circumstances  in  which 

"  Blitz"  was  bought  and  sold  by  him,  308. 
Etymologies,    Eastern    grammarians    not    generally 
qualified  to  consider,   98;   "popular  etymologies" 
illustrated,  prefatory  note  to  Index  i.,  324  et  fn. 
"  Euclid,"  the  Arab  race-horse  (with  full-page  illustra- 
tion), 309. 
"Euphrates,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  271. 
Euphrates,  the  river,  mixed  population  in  the  valley 
of,  16;  deserts  west  the,  65-69  ;  numerous  perished 
cities  near,  65  ;  husbandry  in  the  valley  of,  66  ;  its 
importance  to  horse-breeders,  ib.  ;    dominated  by 
the  nomads,  67  ;   deserts  east  the,  70-77  ;   water- 
wheels  on,  81  fn.  2  ;  the  horses  of  the  settled  Arabs 
on,  are  of  adulterated  blood,  271. 
European  clothes,  difficulty  of  keeping  in  proper  order, 
or  of  replacing,  when  travelling  in  the  East,  149 
fn.   I. 


Farriery,  no  true  Arab  will  handle  farrier's  tools,  179. 
Fatalism,  true  character  of,  in  El  Is-lam,  130. 
Fauna  of  Arabia,  grace  and  beauty  of  the,  95. 
Feasting,  the  Bedouin's  manner  of,  191  et  f  n.  2. 
Feeding-bags,  horses',  318  f  n.  i. 
Firing  horses,  the  Arab  practice  in  respect  of,  184,  185, 

311,312- 
Fish  as  food  of  horses,  12. 

"Fisherman,"  the  English  race-horse,  his  record,  186. 
Fitzwygram,  Lieut.-Col.,  the  horse-shoe  recommended 

by,  201. 


Flags,  use  of,  in  ancient  Arabia,  as  signs  for  wine- 
sellers'  booths,  106  f  n.  2. 

Flight  to  Medina,  Muhammad's,  epoch-making  nature 
of,  52  f  n.  7. 

Foot,  the,  of  the  Arabian  horse,  significant  Arabic 
name  of,  11  ;  different  shapes  of,  produced  by  dif- 
ferent soils,  178  ;  circumstances  affecting  it,  ib.  ;  its 
natural  soundness  shown  by  its  power  of  resisting 
those  circumstances,  179  ;  is  cut  to  fit  the  shoe,  ib. ; 
demands  most  careful  scrutiny  from  the  intending 
purchaser,  181  et  f  n.  i. 

"Foot-founder"  v.  "chest-founder,"  the  question  of, 
lii  et  seq. 

Forsyth,  Sir  Douglas,  the  late,  quoted  on  question  of 
wild  horses,  89  fn.  i. 

"  Fort  Adjutant's  mark,"  meaning  of  the,  in  Arabian 
horses,  313. 

Fortitude  as  a  feature  of  character  in  the  Arabian 
horse,  192,  193. 


Gabriel,  the  Angel,  his  place  in  Muslim  story,  4 
fn.  2. 

Games,  prohibition  of  certain,  by  the  Prophet  Mu- 
hammad, 54  f  n.  2. 

Geldings  in  freshly  landed  batches  of  Arabian  horses, 

311- 

"Godolphin,"  the,  138  fn.  i,  165. 

Goodwood  Cup,  the,  cases  connected  with,  cited  to 
demonstrate  the  futility  of  entering  the  best  Arabian 
racers  for  races  in  England,  208. 

Grass,  importance  of,  as  food  for  horses,  9,  11. 

Grasses  of  El  I'rak,  82  et  f  ns.  i,  2. 

Greyhound,  the  Arab,  high  "  quality"  of,  96. 

"  Greyleg,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  description  of  (with 
full-page  illustration),  254-256. 

Grooming  horses.  Eastern  and  Western  methods  of, 
318  ^/  fns.  2,  3,  320. 

Guarmani,  the  Italian  traveller  and  horse-buyer,  52, 
59 ;  his  experiences  in  Najd,  57 ;  supports  the 
theory  that  the  stallion,  more  than  the  mare,  trans- 
mits the  qualities  of  the  breed,  230,  231. 

"  Gulf  Arabs,"  remarks  on  this  descriptive  term,  as 


H 


Hagar  and  Ishmael,  the  "Ishmaelite"  Arabs  claim 
to  be  descendants  of,  99,  100 ;  the  banishment  of, 
by  Abraham,  not  mentioned  in  Al  Kur-an,  115  ; 
Professor  Wellhausen's  observations  on  the  Bible 
narrative  of,  ib.  f  n.  4  ;  place  of  Hagar's  settlement 
according  to  the  Muslim  commentators,  116. 

Hair  of  the  head,  the  exuberance  of,  among  un- 
civilised peoples,  6  f  n.  i  ;  the  decadence  of,  follows 
the  advance  of  civilisation,  ib.  ;  the  Hindu's  hair 
invariably  black,  266  fn.   i. 

Hallen,  Vet.  Lieut.-Col.,  and  the  "turned-up"  horse- 
shoe, 202. 

Hampton  Court,  sale  of  Arabian  horses  at,  on  death  of 
King  William  IV.,  252  et  f  n.  i. 

Hand-rubbing  of  horses,  value  of,  320  fn.  i. 


406 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


Harems,  Georgian  and  Circassian  girls  in  Turl;ish, 
47  f.n.  2. 

Hasan  bin  Badr,  the  Arab  horse-dealer,  309. 

Hawking  among  the  Arabs,  152  ct  f.n.  2. 

Heart,  a  large,  said  to  be  essential  to  a  race-horse, 
243  ;  example  of,  as  regards  "  Eclipse,"  ib.  f.n.  3. 

Heber,  Bishop,  and  his  Arab  riding-horse,  167. 

Hebron,  a  rival  to  Damascus  in  antiquity,  109  f.n.  3. 

Henderson,  Mr,  late  Consul  at  Aleppo,  letter  from,  to 
the  Author  quoted,  249. 

"Hermit,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  181  f.n.  i  ;  cited  as 
an  e.xample  of  the  indomitable  qualities  of  the 
Arabian  race-horse,  192  ;  his  career  in  India,  and 
his  great  race  with  "  Greyleg"  (with  full-page  illus- 
tration), 256. 

"Hermit,"  Mr  C.  Davis's  reputed  half-bred  Arab 
hunter,  209  f.n.  i. 

Hobbling,  marks  caused  by,  in  El  I'rak  or  in  Arabia, 
mistaken,  in  India,  for  proofs  of  superiority,  313. 

"  Honeysuckle,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  his  career,  307. 

Hoof  of  the  Arabian  horse.     See  Foot. 

Hoopoe,  the,  fable  of  Solomon  and,  12  rf  f.n.  3. 

Horace,  his  advice  to  horse-buyers,  303  ;  an  unfortu- 
nate application  of  the  same,  ib. 

Home's,  Capt.,  distance  ride,  on  his  Arab  horse 
"Jumping  Jimmy,"   193. 

Horse,  the,  copiousness  of  existing  literature  on 
subject  of,  V,  vi  et  f.n.  i  of  prefixes  of  volume  ; 
traditions  regarding  the  origin  of,  4;  his  power 
of  adapting  himself  to  new  foods,  10  et  seq.  ;  his 
herbivorous  habit,  10,  11  ;  when  first  imported 
into  Yemen  ?  27,  28 ;  the  horseman  makes  the, 
88-91;  lost  breeds  of,  go,  91;  anatomical  names 
for  the  bones  of,  compared  with  those  used  by 
horsemen,  144  f.n.  3 ;  in  Eastern  countries  the 
commonest  varieties  of,  are  generally  much  better 
to  go  than  to  look  at,  153,  154;  the  breeding  and 
importing  of,  forbidden  to  the  Israelites,  157  et  f.n. 
I  ;  the  standard  of  intelligence  possessed  by,  con- 
sidered, 195  f.n.  2  ;  examples  of  the  large  sums  paid 
for,  216  f.ns.  I  and  2,  219  f.n.  3;  varieties  of,  225  ; 
adulterated  breeds  of,  towards  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates,  271. 

Horse,  the  Arabian,  where  bred?  19-22,  235-244 
passim  J  what  is  an  Arabian  horse  ?  22  et  seg. ;  the 
degree  in  which  the  breed  shows  diversity  of  form 
and  size,  22,  23,  62  f.n.  i  ;  in  Yemen,  26,  27  ;  in 
Al  Hi-jaz,  28,  29  ;  in  Al  Ha-sa,  29-31  ;  in  Oman, 
32  ;  the  numbers  and  use  of,  in  Najd,  57-61  ;  Mr 
Palgrave's  and  Lady  A.  Blunt's  observations  on 
this  point,  57-59 ;  large  numbers  of,  bred  in  El 
I'rak,  78;  essentially  a  war-horse,  126;  written 
pedigrees  of,  136;  is  a  true  saddle-horse,  153, 
168  ;  honoured  wherever  the  Arab  Prophet's 
teachings  are  received,  158  et  seq.;  foreign  esti- 
mates of  his  qualities,  16^-172 ;  his  tractability, 
168  ;  his  services  in  India,  Afghanistan,  and  other 
countries,  ib.  et  f.n.  i  ;  conflicting  pronouncements 
upon,  169  ^/  seq.  ;  Mr  Sidney's  Book  of  the  Horse 
quoted,  170 ;  Mr  Curr's  Pure  Saddle  -  Horses 
quoted,  ib.  et  seq.  ;  compared  with  other  varieties 
as  regards  constitution  and  character,  173-196;  the 
breed  artificial,  173  ;  defects  of,  197-204;  the  theory 
that   the    cream   of  the   breed   is   inaccessible    to 


foreigners  discussed,  210  et  seq.;  origin  of,  225-244; 
galloping  with  straight  fore-legs,  243  et  i.vi.  1  ;  in- 
and-in  breeding  of,  243,  244  ;  the  typical,  245-266  ; 
in  Sha-mi-ya  and  Al  Ja-zi-ra,  269-276 ;  in  El  I'rak 
and  east  the  Tigris,  277-285  ;  buying,  from  the 
Bedouin,  290-295  ;  and  in  Arabian  and  I'raki  towns, 
296  ;  procuring,  through  consulates  or  consuls,  297, 
298;  buying  exported  Arabians,  299-313;  proper 
treatment  of  the  same,  314-321. 

As  a  hunter:  various  estimates  of,  209  et  f.n.  i, 
316. 

As  a  race-horse :  Mr  Blunt  quoted  on,  206,  207  et 
f.n.  I  ;  some  performances  on  the  turf  in  India  cited, 
207,  208. 

Character  of:  rationale  of  the  Arabian's  tracta- 
bility, 189 ;  treatment  as  determining  character 
190;  "abstemiousness,"  191;  fortitude  and  staying 
power,  192,  193  ;  courage,  instinct,  and  sagacity 
illustrated  and  discussed,  193  et  seq. 

Constitution,  &'c.,  of:  coughs,  174  ;  spavine,  175, 
176;  splint,  176,  177;  ringbone,  178;  curb,  ib.; 
various  shapes  of  foot,  ib. ;  necessity  of  shoeing 
recognised  by  the  Arabs,  179 ;  their  method  of 
shoeing  and  its  results,  ib.,  180;  "chest-founder" 
•z/.  " foot-founder,"  181  et  seq.;  firing,  184;  longev- 
ity, 185  et  f.ns.  I,  2  ;  durability,  185,  186  et  f.n.  i 
et  seq. 

Cross,  the  Arab,  the  question  of,  considered,  137  ; 
the  circumstances  in  which  crossing  is  of  value, 
206  ;  is  the  Arab  cross  now  calculated  to  improve 
the  English  race-horse.''  ib.  et  seq.;  or  the  hunter? 
209  et  f.n.  I  ;  tried  in  Australia,  214  ;  might  it  not 
tend  to  strengthen  the  modern  English  race-horse? 
21S. 

Defects  of:  small  stature,  197,  198  ;  trotting  and 
jumping,  198  ;  a  careless  walker,  and  therefore  not 
a  perfect  hack,  ib.,  199 ;  rationale  of  this,  199 ; 
prevalence  of  twisted  fore  -  legs,  200,  201  ;  at- 
tempts to  cure  "toeing"  by  means  of  novelties 
in  horse-shoes,  202,  203  ;  effect  of  over-weighting 
on  action,  204  et  f.n.   i. 

Diseases  of.  See  Constitutio?i  of,  and  Treat?nent 
of,  whe?i  exported. 

In  El  I'rak  and  east  the  Tigris :  Government 
opposes  obstacles  to  horse-breeding  in,  278  ;  the 
animals  bred  are  not  generally  of  pure  race,  279 ; 
their  manners,  ib.  ;  need  for  castration,  ib.,  280 ; 
the  horses  of  the  U'baid  and  Si-yih  Bedouin,  280, 
281;  the  Kurds  and  their  horses,  281-283;  110 
evidence  that  European  blood  is  used,  283  ;  the 
stock  is  deteriorating,  ib.  ;  possesses  useful  qual- 
ities, 284  ;  El  I'rak  as  a  country  from  which  to 
procure  stud-horses,  ib.,  285. 

In  Shd-mi-ya  and  Al  Ja-zi-ra :  the  pure-bred 
Arabian  is  essentially  the  same  in  and  out  of 
Najd,  269;  the  horse  of  the  Euphrates  Bedouin 
often  has  the  advantage  in  physique,  ib.  ;  consid- 
erable prices  asked  and  obtained  for  their  horses 
by  the  Bedouin  of  Sha-mi-ya,  270  ;  two  famous 
racers  of  Sha-mi-ya,  ib.,  271  ;  many  adulterated 
kinds  of  horses  found  in  the  same  localities,  271  ; 
the  Ba-ri-zi-ya  as  horse-breeders,  272,  273 ;  the 
Turku-ma-ni  horses,  272  et  seq. ;  the  horse  stock 
here  is  composed  of  diverse  elements,  273  et  seq. 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


407 


Naturalisation  of ,  abroad,  219  ct  f.n.  3,  220. 
Origin  of:  some  poetic  accounts  of,  226  et  f.n. 
3  ;  the  myth  of  Solomon's  colts,  226  et  seq.  ;  every 
genuine  Arabian  believed  by  enthusiasts  to  be  de- 
scended from  strains  preserved  by  Solomon,  227 
et  seg. ;  theory  that  the  male  parent  transmits  the 
qualities  of  the  breed,  230,  231  ;  the  opposite 
opinion  held  by  the  Bedouin,  231,  332;  the  desert 
tradition  of  the  Ku-hai-la-tu  'l  a'-juz,  233 ;  and 
of  Al  Kham-sa,  ib.  et  seq.  \  historical  testimony  re- 
garding, discussed,  238  et  seq.  ;  literary  evidence 
of  antiquity  of  the  Arabian  breed,  239,  240 ;  sug- 
gestions on  this  question,  241  et  seq. 
Piirchasiiig,  methods  of: — 

(i.)  From  the  Bedouin,  290-296  ;  folly  of  em- 
ploying agents,  290 ;  the  intending  purchaser's 
starting-point,  291 ;  preparations  and  outfit,  292, 
293  ;  route,  292  et  seq.  ;  how  far  to  adopt  Arab 
usages,  293;  camel-dealing,  ib.,  if^li,;  establish- 
ment of  a  horse-nursery,  294 ;  the  selection  and 
purchase,  295. 

(2.)  In  Arabian  and  I'raki  towns,  difficulties 
of  buying  in,  69,  296,  297 ;  the  activity  of  the 
professional  buyers,  297. 

(3.)  Through  Consulates  or  Consuls,  297,  298  ; 
the  influence  of  Consuls  in  the  country,  297 ; 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  their  approaching  the 
Bedouin,  298. 

(4.)  In  the  Bombay  stables  :  (a)  Buying  horses 
for  ordinary  purposes,  302-304;  the  genuineness 
of  every  so-called  Arabian  should  be  carefully  as- 
certained, 302  ;  instances  of  horses  of  other  breeds 
being  mistaken  for  Arabians,  ib.,  303  ;  the  points 
to  be  looked  for,  304.  {b)  Buying  for  the  turf, 
304-308;  the  difficulty  of  selecting  apart  from 
actual  trial,  305  ;  the  chances  of  picking  a 
hero  by  accident,  ib.,  306  ;  some  rejected  horses 
■which  became  famous,  306  -  308 ;  use  of  the 
time  test,  308,  309 ;  buying  tried  horses,  309, 
310  ;  some  indications  as  to  the  qualities  of  ex- 
ported Arabians,  31 1-3 14;  geldings,  311;  fired 
horses,  ib.,  312  ;  scars  at  the  roots  of  the  ears, 
312 ;  every  horse  is  represented  as  having 
come  from  the  desert,  ib.  ;  marks  caused  by 
hobbling,  313. 

Treatment  of,  when  exported :  is  there  ''such  a 
thing  as  "acclimatisation"?  314;  management  of, 
in  India,  315,  316;  suitability  of  the  British  cli- 
mate, ib. ;  method  of  stabling,  317-319  ;  and  groom- 
ing, 318  et  f.ns.  2,  3;  treatment  of  disease,  319, 
320  et  f.n.  I  ;  advisability  of  obtaining  veterinary 
surgeon's  opinion  as  to  soundness,  320,  321. 

Typical  Arabian,  the :  sense  in  which  the  Ara- 
bian is  "thoroughbred,"  245-247;  how  is  proof  of 
"  thorough-breeding  "  to  be  obtained  ?  247  ;  on  this 
point  oral  tradition  is  not  infallible,  248 ;  while 
turf  performances  are  inconclusive,  ib. ;  and  the 
evidence  of  the  eye  equally  so,  249;  Mr  Palgrave's 
description  of,  considered,  250,  251  ;  group  of  six 
typical  Arabians  depicted,  and  remarked  on,  252, 
253  et  f.n.  5;  "Greylag's"  history  and  points,  254- 
256;  "  Hermit"  described,  256;  size  as  a  feature  of, 
256-258;  "Rex,"  256  et  seq.;  colour,  260  et  seq.; 
mental  characteristics,  267,  26S. 


Horse-boxes,  travelling,  proper  fittings  of,  316  ct  f  n.  i, 
317  etf.n.  I. 

Horse-breeding,  list  of  peoples  of  the  Tigris  who  pur- 
sue, 84  f.n.  I ;  practice  of,  among  the  Bedouin,  121- 
145  ;  among  the  settled  Arabs,  146-154. 

Horse-dealer,  the,  of  Arabia,  123  f.n.  i  ;  his  use  of 
high-sounding  names,  236  ;  his  representations  as 
to  "  blood,"  248  et  f.n.  i  ;  his  search  in  our  day  for 
small  Arabians,  259,  260  ;  illustrative  anecdote,  ib.; 
his  keenness  for  trade,  296,  297  ;  his  speculative 
character,  299,  300  ;  in  Bombay,  300  ;  his  risks  and 
his  caution  in  buying,  301  ;  instances  of  his  judg- 
ment in  choosing  racing  Arabs,  306,  307  ;  his  liabil- 
ity to  error,  307  ;  his  persuasive  eloquence,  308  ;  his 
tendency  to  represent  every  horse  as  desert  born 
and  bred,  312  ;  how  he  manufactures  the  "  Fort 
Adjutant's  mark,"  313. 

Horsemanship,  Bedouin,  the,  138-140  ;  a  poet's  de- 
scription of,   143. 

Horse-mart,  Der  as  a,  68  et  seq. ;  Egypt  as  a,  299  ; 
Bombay  as  a,  ib.  et  seq. 

Horse-pastures,  the,  of  Australasia,  9  ^/ f.n.  i. 

Horse-provender  among  the  Arabs,  80  f  n.  3. 

Horse-racing,  not  practised  by  the  Arabs,  131  et  f.n. 
3,  24S  f.n.  I  ;  in  India,  304,  310,  et  passim. 

Horse-shoe,  the  Asiatic  (with  illustration),  179,  180. 
See  also  Index  i.,  art.  Na'l.  '■ 

Horse-shoe  nails  in  El  I'rik,  203  f.n.  i. 

Horses,  European,  is  it  possible  to  ward  off  decline  in, 
by  crossing  with  Arabs?  218  ;  their  good  qualities 
would  be  developed,  were  they  admitted  to  closer 
intimacy  with  their  masters,  220,  221 ;  the  spread  of 
their  ears  a  point  disliked  by  the  Arabs,  312. 

Horses,  wild,  can  never  have  existed  in  peninsular 
Arabia,  7,  8,  74,  229  ;  reported  indications  of,  in 
Mongolia  and  Northern  Thibet,  89  f.n.   i. 

Hospitality  of  A-mir  Muhammad  of  Jabal  Sham-mar, 
43  ;  Bedouin,  ancient  and  modern  instances  of,  62 
f.n.  2,  114. 

Hump  of  the  camel,  the,  a  provision  in  time  of  lean- 
ness, 294  f.n.  I. 

Hunter,  the  Arabian  horse  as  a.  See  under  Horse, 
the  Arabian. 

Hyder  A'li,  of  Mysore,  partly  of  Arab  lineage,  95. 

Hyderabad,  the  late  Nizam  of,  his  prohibition  of  the 
sale  of  intoxicants,  54  f.n.  4  ;  Arab  blood  said  to 
have  been  imported  into  India  by  Hyderabad  Gov- 
ernment, 1 87. 


Illiterate  condition  of  the  Bedouin  Arabs,  the,  132,  247. 

Immaculate  Conception,  doctrine  of  the,  in  how  far 
preached  by  the  Prophet  Muhammad,  96  f.n.  i. 

Inbreeding,  practice  of,  by  Arab  horse-breeders,  243 
et  seq. 

India,  mad  dogs  in,  33  f.n.  2,  315  fn.  I ;  the  decadence 
of  horse-breeding  in,  91  ;  the  indigenous  horses  of, 
a  century  ago,  ib.,  187  ;  importance  of  the  Arabian 
horse  to,  16S  ;  as  a  market  for  Arabian  horses,  175  ; 
the  Rajpijt's  anxiety  to  keep  his  old  breeds  pure, 
188,  189  ;  pony-racing  in,  259  ;  the  tat-tii  (pony)  of, 
ib.  f.n.  I  ;  the  Government  of,  does  not  buy  greys 
for  the  stud,  265  f.n.  i  ;  horse-racing  in,  304,  310, 


4o8 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


et  passim  J  facilities  for  the  transport  of  horses  from 
Bussorah  to,  315;  effects  of  its  climate  on  Arabian 
horses,  ib.,  316. 

Intoxicants,  use  of,  and  the  Arabs,  52  et  seq.,  119. 

Irrigation  of  the  Arabian  deserts,  how  it  would  affect 
the  Bedouin,  50;  in  El  I'rak,  79. 

Ishmael,  Abraham  commanded  to  sacrifice,  accord- 
ing to  Al  Kur-an,  115,  116;  his  twelve  sons  the 
founders  of  twelve  tribes  of  Arabs,  117,  iiS. 

"  Ishmaelitic,"  the,  and  the  "  Yemenite  "  Arabs,  con- 
trasts between,  118  et  seq. 

Islamism,  its  connectionswith  Judaism,  loi ;  in  Arabia, 
a  townsman's  creed,  114;  the  Bedouin's  position 
with  regard  to,  128,  129,  160;  the  question  of  the 
obligation  of  a  Muslim  people  to  yield  obedience  to 
a  non-Muslim  ruler,  163  f.n.  4 ;  examples  of  its 
toleration  of  persons  of  other  faiths,  ib. 

Israel,  meaning  of  the  name,  157  ;  the  close  connec- 
tion between,  and  Arabia,  in  ancient  times,  100, 
loi ;  did  the  Semite  group  which  ultimately  de- 
veloped into  "Israel"  come  originally  from  the 
Arabian  desert?  103,  ^^bk.  ii.  ch.  n.  passim. 

Israelites,  the,  deportations  of,  by  Assyrian  or  Baby- 
lonian kings,  100;  forbidden  to  breed  or  import 
horses,  157  et  f  n.  i. 

"  Ivo,"  the  N.S.  Wales  colt  by  "  Chester,"  195,  241, 
242  et  f.n.  I,  273. 


Jewish  names,  changing  of,  when  Islamism  embraced, 

106. 
Jewish  religion,  connection  between,  and   Islamism, 

lOI. 

Jewish  settlements,  ancient,   on  the  Tigris  and  Eu- 
phrates, 100,  lOI. 
Jews,  conversion  of,  to  Islamism,  loi,  106  fn.  3. 


K 


Kithiawar,  colour  and  markings  of  the  horses  of,  226 
f  n.  2. 

Kerr,  General  Lord  Mark,  G.C.B.,  his  views  and  prac- 
tice of  horsemanship,  141  f.n.  I. 

Khaz-ga  hieroglyphics,  or  camel  brands,  the  (with 
illustration),  67  et  f  n.  3. 

Kindness,  the  effect  of,  in  forming  the  Arabian's  char- 
acter, I  go,  191. 

"  Kingcraft,"  the  Australian  race-horse,  186. 


"  Laili "  and  the  Maharajah  Ranjit  Singh,  p.  vi  et  f  n. 
2  of  prefixes  of  volume. 

Lancer,  the  skill  of  a  Sham-mar,  76. 

Lane,  Mr  E.  W.,  his  suggestion  as  to  origin  of  name 
"Arabia,"  19  f.n.  2;  his  view  of  the  Semitic  lan- 
guages, 105  f.n.  I  ;  his  Arabic  lexicon,  prefatory 
note  to  Index  i.,  324. 

"  Lanercost,"  the  Arabian  race-horse  (with  full-page 
illustration),  309. 

Lawrence,  author  of  77?^  Horse,  quoted  regarding 
longevity  in  horses,   1S5  fn.  2.  ^ 


Layard,  Sir  H.  A.,  a  legend  of  Hatim's  generosity 
related  by,  62  f.n.  2  ;  references  to,  74,  149  f  n.  i  ; 
the  subdivisions  of  the  Sham-mar  nation  according 
to,  122  fn.  5  ;  a  curious  custom  of  desert  warfare 
noted  by,  124;  his  description  of  Shekh  Sfuk's 
mare,  ib.  fn.  i  ;  costume  as  a  traveller,  149  fn.  i. 

Locusts,  12;  the  reception  of  a  flight  of,  in  the  settled 
parts  of  Arabia,  13  ;  a  source  of  food-supply  to  the 
nomads,  //;.,  14. 

Loin-ill,  the  disease  of,  in  India,  314  et  f  n.  i. 

Longevity  in  exported  Arabians,  instances  of,  185  fn. 
I  ;  and  in  our  own  breeds,  ib.  f  n.  2. 

Lyall,  Mr  C.  J.,  his  Tra?tslaiions  of  Ancient  Arabian 
Poetry  referred  to,  49. 


M 


"  Magdala,"  show-name  in  England  of  the  Bengal 
race-horse  "Verdant  Green,"  192  et  fn.  i. 

Mameluke  bit,  the,  150  et  fn.  i. 

Management  of  domesticated  animals  by  the  Arabs, 
the,  196. 

Maps  of  Arabia,  22  et  f  ns.  i  and  2. 

Marco  Polo,  description  by,  of  a  Tatar  stud,  266  ;  his 
account  of  the  "  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain,"  Index 
i.,  330  ;  his  reference  to  the  "  kingdom  of  Mawsal," 
ib.  372  ;  to  Turkumani  horses,  ib.  394. 

Mare,  the  desert,  v.  the  desert  stallion,  as  a  means  of 
introducing  the  "Arab  cross,"  214,  215  ;  pre-emi- 
nence ascribed  to  the,  by  the  Arabs,  231  et  seq.,  241. 

Mare's  milk.     See  under  Kumis  in  Index  i. 

"  Marengo,"  Bonaparte's  charger,  253  et  f  n.  5. 

"  Markham  Arabian,"  the,  138  et  f  n.  i. 

Markings  and  colours  of  horses,  superstitions  of  the 
Bedouin  Arabs  regarding,  264. 

Marriage,  legislation  of  the  Prophet  Muhammad  re- 
garding, 17  fn.  I  ;  practice  of  the  Bedouins  as  to 
consanguineous,  94  et  seq.,  231. 

Martin,  W.  C.  L.,  A  History  of  the  Horse  by,  quoted, 
204  f  n.  I. 

Mary,  the  Virgin,  the  immaculate  conception  of. 
Gibbon's  suggestion  that  this  tenet  was  "borrowed 
from  Al  Kur-an,"  96  f.n.  i  ;  the  late  Dean  of  West- 
minster's view,  ib. ;  the  Arab  Prophet's  teaching  on 
this  point,  ib. 

Mecca,  the  condition  of  modern,  19,  20,  160  et  f.n.  3  ; 
no  representative  of  a  foreign  power  at,  47 ;  dress 
worn  by  the  pilgrim  approaching,  143  f.n.  6  ;  tombs 
destroyed  by  the  Wahabis  at,  162  et  f  n.  2. 

Medina,  the  date-palms  around,  12  f  n.  i ;  the  city  of  28. 

Mesopotamia,  the  application  of  this  geographical  term 
uncertain,  70  et  fn.  1,71,  74,  in  fn.  2. 

"  Minuet,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  306. 

Mirage,  the,  81  f.n.  5.     See  also  Sa-rab,  in  Index  i. 

"  Monarch,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  and  the  Goodwood 
Cup,  208. 

Mongolia,  wild  horses  of,  89  f  n.  i  ;  horses  of,  238  et 
fn.  I. 

Mosque,  the  term,  163  f.n.  2. 

Mosul,  13,  125  ;  no  British  consul  at,  297. 

Muhammad,  the  Prophet  of  Arabia,  v.  Index  i. 

Mule,  the,  not  fully  adapted  for  desert  travel,  76  ; 
largely  bred  by  the  settled  Arabs,  159  ;  the  Arab 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


409 


tradition  regarding  the  origin   of  its  sterility,  ib. ; 
the  female  follows  the  muleteer's  riding-horse,  311. 
Muslim,  the  followers  of  El  Islam  properly  known  as, 
loi  f.n.  2. 


N 


"  Najdi  Arabs,"  remarks  on  this  term  as  current  among 

horsemen  in  India,  31. 
Naming  of  horses,  the,  by  the  Arabs,  237. 
Naturalisation  of  animals,  some  facts  regarding  the, 

314.     See  also  under  Horse,  the  Arabian. 
Navigators,  the  Arabs  as,  21  et  f.n.  i. 
Nervousness,    constitutional,    in    horses,   as    distinct 

from  mere  "  ine.xperience,"  195. 
Niebuhr  quoted  on  the  delimitation  of  Arabia,  20. 
"Nimrod,"  quoted  on  splint,  177. 
Nolan,  Capt.,  book  on  cavalry  by,  referred  to,  198. 
Nomadic  races,  the,  of  Arabia  proper,  15,  59  f.n.  2. 
Nose-bag,  the  horse's,  318  f.n.  i. 


o 


"  Oranmore,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  207,  208. 

Oriental  Sporting  Magazine,  the,  quoted  regarding 
the  Arab  horse  "  Copenhagen"  and  the  Goodwood 
Cup,  208 ;  Esau  bin  Curtas  quoted,  as  to  blood 
in  Arab  horses,  248  f.n.  i  ;  the  Bombay  Orieiital 
Sporting  Magazine  and  the  "  Fort  Adjutant's 
mark,"  313. 

Origin  of  the  Arabian  horse.  See  under  Horse,  the 
Arabian. 

Ottoman  Government,  the,  now  holds  Al  Ha-s&,  30  et 
f.n.  2  ;  and  Wahabyism,  44,  45  ;  influences  the 
Najdian  clans  but  slightly,  45  ;  its  position  in  Al 
Ja-zi-ra,  71,  72  ;  has  but  a  varying  influence  over 
the  Bedouin  nations  of  El  I'rak,  119,  120;  collec- 
tion of  the  dues  of,  by  the  mounted  police,  147  ; 
endeavours  to  stop  the  export  of  horses  via  El  I'rak, 
161,  278,  296;  its  system  of  rule  in  El  I'rik,  278; 
does  not  foster  horse-breeding  in  El  I'rak,  ib. ;  its 
jealousy  of  Consuls,  297,  298. 

Over-weighting,  as  a  cause  of  defective  action,  204  et 
f.n.  I. 

Owen,  Surgeon- Major,  CLE.,  on  wild  horses,  89 
f.n.  I. 


Pad,  or  saddle,  of  the  Bedouin,  141  (with  illustration). 

Paganism  of  ancient  Arabia,  features  of  the,  128  et 
seq. 

Palgrave,  Mr  W.  G.,  his  assertion  that  the  hordes  of 
the  Sha-ri-rat  are  of  the  genuine  Bedouin  contro- 
verted, 16 ;  the  delimitation  of  Arabia  according 
to,  19;  boundary  given  to  Najd  by,  32  f.n.  i;  his 
journey  across  the  Peninsula,  35,  36  ;  his  estimate 
of  the  population  of  Ja-bal  Sham-mar,  39  f.n.  I  ;  on 
the  horse-yield  of  Najd,  57,  58 ;  his  estimate  of  the 
numbers  of  the  Ae-ni-za  and  the  Sham-mar  nations, 
63  f.n.  I  ;  his  statements  in  the  Ency.  Brit,  on 
Arabian  topics  on  many  points  misleading,  99  et 
f.n.  2  ;  the  Sha-ra-rat  Arabs  are  not,  as  represented 


by  him,  sun-worshippers,  12S  ;  his  contention  that 
the  true  Arabian  horse  is  inaccessible  to  foreigners 
shown  to  be  erroneous,  210;  his  statements  in  the 
Ency.  Brit,  on  the  Najdi  breed  examined,  210-212  ; 
his  view  that  the  pure  Arabian  stock  has  never 
been  subdivided,  refuted,  236  ;  his  description  of 
the  A-mir  Fai-sal's  horses  criticised,  250,  251  ;  his 
remarks  on  the  colour  of  the  genuine  Arabian 
confuted,  260,  261. 

Palmyra,  or  Tadmor,  66  et  f.n.  i. 

Pater,  General,  anecdote  of,  and  his  charger,  204 
f.n.  I. 

Pedigrees  of  Arabian  horses  written  (with  full-page 
illustration),  136;  Arabs  give  the  mare  the  pre- 
eminence in,  231 ;  the  true  Bedouin  will  frankly 
tell  all  they  know  regarding,  247,  248. 

Pedlars  in  the  Arabian  desert,  294  f.n.  2. 

Pelly,  General  Sir  Lewis,  K.C.S.I.,  his  journey  to  Ar 
Ri-adh,  36  et  f.n.  2  ;  his  description  of  the  sandy 
desert,  37. 

Peninsular  Arabia,  25-61  ;  nomadic  nations  of,  59 
f.n.  2. 

Percivall,  Mr,  on  splint,  177  ;  on  coffin-joint  lameness, 
182. 

Persia,  the  blood-horse  in,  198  f.n.  i  ;  the  Persians  as 
breeders  and  managers  of  horses,  239  f.n.  i. 

Persian  Gulf,  the  littoral  of,  at  one  time  greater  in 
extent  than  now,  78  f.n.  3. 

Personification,  love  of  the  Arabs  for,  34  f.n.  i. 

Philology,  remarks  on,  prefatory  note  to  Index  i., 
324  ;  science  of,  comparative,  still  in  its  infancy. 
Index  i.,  345,  346  f.n. 

Physical  aspect  of  the  Arabs  in  connection  with  the 
question  of  their  origin,  103. 

Pococke,  Dr  R.,  quoted  regarding  site  of  "  Ur  of  the 
Chaldees,"  1 1 1  f.n.  2. 

Poetical  genius  of  the  primitive  Arabs,  the,  135  eti.n%. 

3.  4- 
Pony,  the,  of  India,  259  f.n.  i. 
Pony-racing  in  India,  effects  of,  259,  260. 
Pool,  Mr  Stanley  Lane,  and  the  "  Table-talk  "  of  the 

Prophet  Muhammad,  93  f.n.  i. 
Prehistoric  horse,  the,  225. 
Presents,  oriental  diplomacy  regarding  the  acceptance 

and  rejection  of,  42  f.n.  i  ;  the  giving  of,  among  the 

Arabs,  very  often  only  another  form  of  selling,  47, 

296. 
Proper  names   of  the   Arabs,    105  ;    manufacture   of 

Arabic  proper  names  by  Jewish  converts,  106  et  seq. 
Purchasing   the   Arabian   horse.     See   under   Horse, 

the  Arabian. 
Purity  of  blood,  claim  to,  by  the  Bedouin  Arabs,  93  et 

seq. ;  their  faith  in,  as  horsemen,   137,  231,  267  et 

passim,  yyj. 


"Raby,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  iSi  f.n.  i. 

Rachel,   of  Scripture,   her  acts  and  traits  typical  of 

modern  tent-life  on  the  Euphrates,  no  f.n.  i  ;  her 

tomb,  ib. 
Racing,  buying  Arabians  with  a  view  to,  in  Bombay, 

304-308. 
Raiding,  across  the  Euphrates,  67 ;  the  Bedouin  method 


4IO 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


of,  112  f.n.  I,  127,  12S  ;  qualities  required  to  make  a 
horse  excel  in,  131,  24S  ;  the  Bedouin  horses  ex- 
pressly bred  for,  242. 

Rain,  effect  of,  in  Sha-mi-ya,  described  by  Lady  A. 
Blunt,  68. 

Rainfall,  the,  of  Najd,  50  ;  of  Sha-mi-ya,  67,  68  ;  of 
El  I'rak,  So. 

Rajputana,  breeding  of  horses  in,  1S9. 

Rawlinson,  General  Sir  H.  C,  quoted,  6  f.n.  i  ;  his 
bay  Arabian,  260  ;  his  estimate  of  the  numbers  of 
the  Kurd  nation,  282  f.n.  2. 

"Red  Hazard,"  the  Arabian  race-horse,  176,  306. 

Religious  beliefs,  the,  of  the  Bedouin  Arabs,  128,  139, 
160;  Dr  Wallin  quoted  regarding,  129  f.n.  i. 

"  Revenge,"  the  Arabian  race-horse,  270. 

"  Rex,"  the  Arabian  race-horse,  his  career  (with  full- 
page  illustration),  256-258. 

Riding-halter,  the,  of  the  Bedouin  Arabs  (with  illus- 
tration), 140,  141. 

Ringbone,  17S. 

Rivers,  the,  of  Al  Ja-zi-ri,  difificult  of  access  by  reason 
of  their  steep  banks,  73. 

Roberts',  General  Lord,  favourite  Arab  charger,  185 
f.n.   I. 

Ross,  Dr,  among  the  Sham-mar  Bedouin,  75,  76. 

Rous,  Admiral,  on  the  development  of  the  English 
thoroughbred,  197  ;  cited,  243  f.n.  3,  305. 

Russell,  Rev.  John,  his  breed  of  terriers,  240  et  f.n.  6. 


Sabffians,  the  religion  of  the,  28  f.n.  2.  See  also 
Index  i.,  f.n.  to  article  Sa-ba,  p.  382. 

Saddlery,  the,  of  the  Bedouin  (with  illustration),  141, 
240-244  passim;  of  the  settled  Arabs  (with  illus- 
tration), 147,  14S. 

Sadlier,  Captain,  his  journey  across  the  Arabian  pen- 
insula in  1819,  35  ;  quoted,  ib. 

Salar  Jung,  Sir,  the  late  Nawab,  G.C.S.I.,  of  Hydera- 
bad, Arab  lineage  of,  95  ;  an  Argamak  horse  taken 
to,  by  a  Hirati  dealer,  274. 

Scott,  Sir  W.,  ballad  by,  quoted  with  reference  to 
colour  in  horses,  267. 

Seasons,  the  four,  recognised  by  the  Bedouin,  50  f.n.  2. 

Self-command,  the,  of  the  Arabian  horse,  267,  268. 

Semite,  explanation  of  the  term,  92  f.n.  2. 

Semitic  languages,  the,  Lane's  observations  on,  105  f.n. 
I  ;  mystery  of  the  triliteral  root  of,  Index  i.,  345, 
346  f.n. 

Sheba,  Queen  of,  visit  of,  to  Solomon,  27. 

Shetland  cattle,  dried  fish  as  food  of,  12. 

Shoe,  the  Eastern  horse-  (with  illustration),  179,  180; 
some  novelties  in  (with  illustrations),  201-203. 

Shoe,  the,  of  th€*Arabs  (with  illustration),  97  f.n.  4. 

Shoeing  horses,  the  necessity  of,  recognised  by  the 
Arabs,  179;  their  method  of,  and  its  effects,  179-181; 
in  India  and  in  Baghdad,  202,  203. 

Sidney's  Book  of  the  Horse  quoted,  165,  170,  257 
f.n.  I. 

Sinaitic  peninsula,  elimination  of  the,  in  considering 
the  country  of  the  Arabian  horse,  25. 

"  Sir  Benjamin,"  the  Cape  horse,  273. 

Size,  as  a  character  in  horses,  197. 


Skene,  Mr,  the  late,  of  Aleppo,  on  the  horses  of  the 
desert,  212,  213;  his  purchases  of  Arabians,  213  et 
f.n.  2,  2 1 8. 

Smith,  Lieut.-Col.  Ham.,  on  the  Arabian  breed  of 
horses,  261. 

Smith,  Prof.  W.  Robertson,  The  Old  Testajiient  in  the 
Jewish  Church  by,  referred  to,  115  f.n.  4. 

Solomon  and  the  hoopoe,  tradition  regarding,  12  et 
f.n.  3  ;  his  genius  for  trading,  27  ;  the  myth  of,  and 
the  seven  colts,  226  et  f.n.  3 ;  his  renown  in 
Western  Asia,  226;  believed  by  the  Arabs  to  have 
been  one  of  them,  227  ;  the  legend  regarding  his 
sacrifice  of  certain  mares,  ib.;  every  genuine 
Arabian  horse  believed  by  many  to  derive  his  pedi- 
gree from  strains  preserved  by,  ib.  et  seq. 

Spavine,  175,  176. 

Speech  of  the  Arabs,  the,  in  connection  with  the 
question  of  their  origin,  104  et  seq. 

Splint,  176,  177. 

Sponge,  use  of  the,  in  stable  economy,  31S  f.n.  2. 

Spur,  the  Bedouin  (with  illustration),  142 ;  use  and 
abuse  of  the,  195  f.n.  i. 

Stabling  of  Arabian  horses,  317-319. 

Stirrups,  the  advantage  of  being  able  to  ride  without, 
illustrated,  141  f.n.  i  ;  an  ornamental  variety  of 
(with  illustration),  148. 

"  Stockings  "  in  horses.  Eastern  ideas  regarding,  264 
ei  f.n.  2. 

Strabo,  his  statement  that  Yemen  contained  neither 
horses  nor  mules  considered,  27;  on  the  ancient  in- 
habitants of  S.  Arabia,  97. 

Straight  fore-legs,  galloping  with,  243. 

Stud-book,  the  English,  its  beginning  and  history, 
246,  247. 

Stud-horses,  the  procuring  of,  from  "  Turkish  Arabia," 
284. 

Sultan,  H.I.M.  the,  of  Turkey,  30  f.n.  2,  71,  147  ;  the 
relations  between,  and  the  A-mir  Muhammad  of  Ja- 
bal  Sham-mar,  44,  45  ;  his  personality  a  formidable 
factor  in  Osmanli  politics,  278. 

Sun-worship,  is  it  practised  by  any  of  the  Arabs  ? 
128,  129. 

Superstitions  of  the  Bedouin  Arabs,  the,  regarding 
colours  and  markings  of  horses,  264. 

Swiss  merchant,  a,  robbed  and  stripped  by  the  desert 
Arabs,  36  f.n.  3. 

Syrian  desert,  the.  See  page  references  under  Sha- 
mi-ya  in  Index  i. 


Tail  of  the  Arab  horse,  set  given  to,  by  the  Bedouin, 
251. 

Tattersall,  the  late  Mr  Richard,  sentiments  regarding 
Arabian  horses,  169. 

Tell  el  Amarna,  in  Upper  Egypt,  finding  of  Cunei- 
form Tablets  at,  105  f.n.  i. 

Tents,  purchasing,  in  towns  like  Baghdad,  76  f.n.  i. 

Thibet,  Northern,  accounts  of  wild  horses  in,  89  f.n.  i. 

Thoroughbred,  Admiral  Rous  on  the  progressive 
improvement  of  the  English,  197  ;  Mr  Blunt's  at- 
tempt to  produce  a  new  race  of,  220,  246 ;  sense  in 
which  the  Arabian  is,  94,  245-247  ;  wherein  consists 
the  proof  of  "  thorough-breeding  "  ?  247  et  seq. 


INDEX   OF  SUBJECTS. 


411 


Thunderstorm,  an  Arabian  poet's  description  of  a, 
translated,  49  witli  f.ns. 

Tigris,  the  river,  mixed  population  of  valley  of,  16,  84 ; 
scenery  of  the  same  tract,  81  ;  list  of  horse-breeding 
nations  of,  84  f  n.  i  ;  the  horses  of  its  valley  are  of 
adulterated  blood,  271. 

Tigris-land.  See  under  [El]  1'rXk,  in  Index  i.,  for 
page  references. 

Time  test,  use  of  the,  before  buying  Arabians  for 
racing,  308  et  scq. 

Tobacco,  the  Bedouin's  love  of,  52,  164  et  f  n.  2  ;  not 
tolerated  by  Wahabyism,  164. 

"Toeing,"  a  defect  of  Arabian  horses,  199,  200;  at- 
tempts made  to  remedy  this  by  means  of  novelties 
in  horse-shoes,  202,  203  ;  another  remedy  suggested, 
204. 

Toleration,  examples  of,  shown  by  the  Muslim,  163 
f.n.  4. 

Tombs,  destruction  of,  by  the  Wahabis,  162  et  f.n.  2. 

"Touchstone,"  the  race-horse,  199  fn.  3,  243,  271. 

Transcription  of  Arabic  words  in  Roman  letters, 
note  on  the,  pp.  ix,  x  of  prefixes  of  volume. 

Transport  of  Arab  horses  to  England,  the,  316  et  fn. 
I,  317  et  fn.  I. 

Travellers  in  Arabia,  treatment  of,  33  et  f.n.  2  ;  hints 
to,  149  et  f  n.  I,  292-295. 

Tripping.     See  Toeing. 

Turkish  Government.     See  Ottoman. 

Turku-man  nation,  article  in  Blackwood's  Magazine 
quoted  on  history  of  the,  272. 

Turku-ma-ni  horse,  the,  article  in  Blackwood's  Maga- 
zi7te  quoted  on,  272  ;  blood  relationship  between, 
and  the  Arabian,  273  ;  the  Argamak  variety  of,  274 
et  f.n.  I  ;  mongrel  Turku-ma-nis  often  mistaken  for 
large  Arabians,  274-276. 

TurnbuU,  Gen.  and  Mrs,  Arab  horse  in  the  posses- 
sion of,  185  f.n.  I. 

u 

Upton,  Major,  quoted,  7  fn.  i,  213  fn.  i;  his  purchase 
of  mares  from  the  Ae-ni-za,  218  ;  his  views  on  the 
origin  and  history  of  the  Arabian  breed,  228,  229, 
246;  chose  his  stud-horses  from  the  Bedouin  of 
the  Euphrates,  270. 

"  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,"  locality  of,  discussed,  in  f.n. 
2. 


V 


Veiling  of  women,  the,  among  the  Arabs,  134  et  fn.  i. 

"  Venus,"  the  Arabian  race-horse,  270. 

"Verdant  Green,"  the  Bengal-bred  race-horse,  192  et 
f.n.  I. 

Veterinary  examination  of  Arabian  horses,  advisa- 
bility of,  as  soon  as  possible  after  they  have  been 
brought  to  a  civilised  country,  320. 

w 

Wahabyism,  has  been  twice  repressed,  30  et  f  n.  2  ; 


its  claim  to  the  title  of  the  true  Is-lam  considered, 
161  et  f  n.  2  ;  its  primary  aims,  162  ;  failed  to  im- 
press the  Bedouin,  ib. ;  found  expression  in  the  de- 
struction of  tombs,  ib.  et  f  n.  2  ;  the  puritanical 
rigour  of,  162-164  ;  parallelisms  between,  and  cer- 
tain developments  of  Puritanism  in  Europe,  163, 
164  et  f.ns.  ;  how,  under  its  spread,  the  horse's 
importance  was  increased,  164  ;  and  his  diffusion 
promoted,  165. 

Wallin,  Dr,  of  Finland,  quoted  regarding  religious 
beliefs  of  nomadic  Arabs,  129  fn.  i. 

Water,  extreme  importance  attached  to,  in  the  East, 
4,  5  et  f  n.  I  ;  the  water  of  some  localities  favours 
animal  growth  more  than  that  of  others,  5  ;  the  value 
of  running  water  in  horse-breeding,  9  et  f  n.  i  ;  the 
Arab  method  of  drawing,  47  f.n.  3  ;  how  the  Bedouin 
contend  against  the  want  of,  48  et  seq. ;  drought  in 
Arabia,  50  et  seq. ;  water  not  stored  by  the  Bedouin, 
ib. ;  steep  banks  make  the  rivers  of  El  I'r^k  difficult 
of  access,  73. 

Water-famine,  description  of  a,  in  Arabia,  51. 

Water-wheels  on  the  Euphrates,  81  f  n.  2. 

Weapons  of  Arabia,  the,  104  f  n.  i  ;  pre-Islamic  bal- 
lad translated  regarding  ancient,  ib. 

Wellhausen,  Prof,  art.  "Moses"  in  Ency.  Brit,  by, 
referred  to  regarding  circumcision  by  Zipporah  of 
her  son,  113  f.n.  3 ;  art.  "  Pentateuch  "  in  Ency.  Brit. 
by,  quoted  as  to  history  of  Ishmael,  115  fn.  4; 
meaning  of  name  Israel,  according  to,  157. 

White  asses,  the,  of  Al  Ha-sa,  31. 

White  horses  and  mares,  stud  of,  kept  by  a  Tatar 
sovereign,  266. 

White,  the  late  Mr  James,  of  Sydney,  214,  241  f.n.  i. 

Wild  horses.     See  Horses,  wild. 

William  IV.,  King,  dispersion  of  his  stud  of  Arabian 
horses,  252  et  f.n.  i. 

Wine,  the  Bedouins'  abstinence  from,  considered,  52 
et  seq.,  119. 

Wine-sellers'  booths,  flags  used  as  signs  for,  in  pagan 
Arabia,  106  f  n.  2. 

Wood,  Mr  R.,  his  work  on  the  Ruins  of  Palmyra  re- 
ferred to,  66  fn.  I. 

Works  consulted  by  the  author,  list  of  principal,  pp. 
xi-xiii  of  prefixes  of  volume. 

Wiirtemberg,  the  late  King  of  his  stud  of  Arabians, 
2ig. 


Y 


"Yemenite,"  the,  and  the  "  Ishmaelitic"  Arabs,  con- 
trasts between,  118  et  seq. 

Yeok  Tepe,  as  a  centre  for  the  purchase  of  Argamak 
horses,  274  f  n.  i. 

Youatt,  Mr  W.,  quoted,  253. 

"  Young  Revenge,"  the  Arab  race-horse,  270  f n.  2, 
307,  308. 


Zipporah,  Moses'  wife.     See  Index  i. 


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